


rather be

by not_my_century (adhdmollymauk)



Category: Cardcaptor Sakura, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, xxxHoLic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 17:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15124538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adhdmollymauk/pseuds/not_my_century
Summary: just so you know what you're getting into: i wrote this Four Whole Years Ago and never posted it back then, but honestly it's pretty decent, so i'm slapping it up here uneditedhonestly the best description for this is "romcom AU." it's a cheesy romcom, narrated by Kurogane, who is very angry about being in a cheesy romcom. Yuuko is there.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> watch me panic and orphan this in 5 seconds but honestly my writing from back then is Not that bad and this is the longest piece i've ever finished and it deserved to get read!
> 
> some things:  
> -this is so very 2014. and so 2014 me culture. i haven't changed any of the references, please laugh about them with me.  
> -i don't write trc anymore and haven't been in the fandom in years, so i'm not planning to write any more pieces in this 'verse or more kurofai or anything, but this fandom and ship were really special to me at.... a lot of points in my life and this fic got me through, honestly, a summer that would otherwise have been VERY bad mental health wise, which is why i forgot about its existence for so long  
> -this also was me learning to say fuck it and stop being so afraid of being cliche or derivative, so there are a number of Cliches in here and they're just fuckin fun and i'm having fun with it!  
> -any critiques of the writing in this have almost certainly been fixed by now and also i don't want to think about them, and i know the pacing is a bit of a mess and there's some clunky phrasing, but like. whatever man

Kurogane has no idea why he’s foregone his usual morning Starbucks stop in favor of the Cat’s Eye Café, that new little place that opened up a few months ago. Maybe it has something to do with the endless lines at Starbucks and how they always make him late for work, or curiosity about the mysterious owner, a newbie in this small town. Maybe it’s boredom, or a hope that this place will have  _ normal fucking coffee _ instead of those weird frothy things Starbucks favors. It certainly isn’t because of a half-remembered conversation between coworkers about how cute all the baristas are (“no, dude, literally all of them. Like, I think it’s a requirement to be flawless if you wanna work there”). Or maybe it’s fate. Not that he believes in all that bullshit.

 

He has to admit, though, his coworkers were right about the baristas. The guy behind the counter is gorgeous, if you like the blond, pretty, waifish type. Which Kurogane definitely does not. His body type is what most people would call “lanky” and Kurogane would call “never seen the inside of a gym in his life.” 

 

The girl at the other register, who has a slightly longer line—three to Kurogane’s side’s two, counting him—is also cute, for a high schooler. In fact, she’s adorable. Not that Kurogane would ever admit to having thought  _ anyone _ “adorable.” He’s pretty sure she’s a big draw for all the high-school age boys, and probably a lot of the girls—that sandy pixie cut, big green eyes and innocent smile probably break a million fifteen-year-old hearts a day, and the loose crop top and high-waisted shorts probably don’t hurt either.

 

The girl in front of him gets her order, giggling a little at something Blondie says, and is about to walk off (when she’s  _ quite  _ finished chatting up the guy, that is. Kurogane taps his watch impatiently). Finally, she’s off, and Kurogane is greeted by an obnoxious fake smile and a syrupy, too-cheery tone. He hates over-cheerful people. Especially ones who can be cheerful in the damn  _ morning _ .

 

“Hello! What can I get you~?” chirps Blondie, whose nametag reads FAI in a loopy cursive script. This is the only sign that he even works here—unlike Starbucks, this place doesn’t seem to have a uniform. They should, though, Kurogane thinks. This Fai guy is wearing what looks like jeans, a plain light blue t-shirt and the most ridiculous ascot… neckerchief….  _ thing _ he’s ever seen in his life. He can’t tell if it’s vaguely unprofessional or just weird.

 

“Large coffee, black, to go,” he growls, glad he can at least save himself the annoyance of ordering a damn “grande americano,” of all the ridiculous names.

 

“O~kay! And who’s that for?” Blondie—Fai—smiles even wider and poises a Sharpie to write the name on his cup.

 

“Do you really need a name? I’m the only one  _ at  _ your damn register.” He barely resists the urge to be  _ really _ stubborn and say “me.”

 

“If you don’t give me one I’ll have to make one up!” Fai’s Patented Food-Service Smile™ looks almost predatory, like a—an  _ anglerfish  _ or something, just waiting to lure him in.

 

Kurogane growls under his breath. Man, this guy is really getting on his nerves. “Kurogane,” he grits out, pronouncing each syllable as if it’s a throwing knife, then spells it. The guy writes it down, nodding gravely, his tongue poking out in concentration.

 

Kurogane misses Starbucks already. Sure, they made his name a hopeless scribble the first few times he showed up there, but eventually he’s become a regular and the morning baristas all know his name and his order (and are more than a little scared of him). He misses being asked if he wants “the usual.” Not for the first time, he wonders what he’s doing here.

 

Blondie—dammit, this guy is too annoying to merit being thought of by name—makes a show of swiping his credit card, deftly punching in numbers on a keypad with impossibly long fingers, then hands it over with a flourish and turns around to make the coffee. He’s  _ humming _ . It’s slightly off-key and gratingly loud and doesn’t seem to have any sort of discernible tune. Kurogane clenches his fists and glares at the guy’s back as if his eyes could become lasers and bore holes in it, or use the Force to make him shut up or something. He’s certainly weak-minded enough. Kurogane doubts there’s  _ anything  _ up there besides that obnoxiously fluffy hair.

 

The kid at the next register is blushing and stammering his way through his order. Kurogane rolls his eyes. This kid looks like he’s about to burn up, his damn face is so red. He drops his change on the counter as the girl hands it to him—of course he does—and he and the girl almost bump heads as they both go to pick it up. A few quarters roll off behind the counter, and the girl hurriedly goes to pick them up as the kid apologizes profusely, looking half-dead from embarrassment. He almost dies when he sees  _ something _ behind the counter—Kurogane isn’t about to look, but he’s guessing it has to do with the slightly suggestive position necessary to pick up those coins, and/or the amount of skin the girl’s top is probably showing right now.

 

“I- I’m so sorry!” the kid exclaims as the girl returns with the change. He blushes even redder when their hands brush and nearly drops it again, fumbling to zip it into his backpack. “I-It won’t happen again!” He drops the backpack as he loses control of the zipper.

 

Kurogane is so absorbed with the show taking place at the next register that he barely notices his coffee, slid onto the counter in front of him.

 

“Kids, right?” says Blondie quietly with a fond smile and a wink, nudging the coffee an inch or two closer so that it nearly burns Kurogane’s arm. He doesn’t take his hand off it. Those delicate fingers are arranged strategically in order to show off the rings he wears; for show, like everything else about him.

 

“Uh, yeah,” he mutters, turning to look back at the two idiot kids. The kid’s gone, but he’s predictably forgotten his pastry. The girl, blushing furiously, runs after him. It’s like something out of a damn romcom.

 

He takes his coffee, hand brushing against the barista’s for a second. Not an accident, of course. Their eyes meet, and Kurogane suddenly realizes with a slight shock that he’s misjudged this guy. Those clear blue eyes (a part of his brain that he  _ very _ much wants to shut up is whispering “gorgeous”) do not, cannot belong to a vapid idiot. This guy knows  _ exactly _ what he’s doing, and he’s hiding something. A very large something.

 

“Have a nice day~”  _ Fai _ says with another wink, leaning on the counter with both bony elbows. 

 

“Thanks,” Kurogane grates out, still eyeing him as he walks out of the shop, half expecting him to pull out an eyepatch or a machine gun or something. He leaves for work, still thinking about those eyes. He only realizes the name on his cup reads KURGANIE in the same loopy script when he’s halfway to work, and unfortunately, that obnoxious twerp isn’t there to hear his growl of frustration.

 

xXx

 

He tells Doumeki about his crazy morning over lunch. Doumeki’s a local high school kid who helps out at the studio over the summer as an archery instructor. He’s the strong, silent type, which really gets on some people’s nerves, but Kurogane doesn’t mind him. He rarely says anything during one of Kurogane’s protracted rants, and sometimes his lack of response is frustrating, but mostly it’s nice to have someone who doesn’t tell him to shut up every time he starts in on his latest pet peeve. At this point, Doumeki’s the only one at the studio who even tolerates Kurogane enough to hang out with him—he’s driven all the others away with his exaggerated gruffness, which is exactly how he likes it. It’s kinda fun to scare the kids he teaches kendo, too. Kids annoy him—he’s not even sure why he took this job—but he does enjoy making sure they’re scared shitless of Kurogane-sensei.

 

“I hate to say it, but the damn coffee was actually delicious,” he finishes, annoyed at the world for this coincidence that means he’s probably going to have to see that idiot again.

 

Doumeki nods slowly. “You know, I know those kids you were talking about,” he says, confusing Kurogane briefly before he realizes what this refers to.

 

“Oh yeah? Do they go to your school?” Not surprising, since there only really is one school nearby, besides a magnet school that’s too far for most to consider driving their kids to.

 

He nods again. “Girl’s Sakura Kinomoto. Cutest girl in school, according to most. She’s only a rising sophomore, but half the school is in love with her and she doesn’t realize it.” He makes a disapproving noise. “The older ones just think she’s adorable. I’m actually not sure who the guy is, but I bet I know him too.”

 

“Could be anyone, seems like,” says Kurogane, unconsciously picking up a bit of Doumeki’s speech pattern. “Uh, he’s got sorta messy brown hair, brown eyes, not too much taller than the girl, skinny as a stick. Looks like a total dweeb. He had his pants tucked into his shoes, for chrissake.”

 

Doumeki laughs a little. “’Course it’s him. That’s Syaoran Li, my best friend’s little brother.” Kurogane wonders if he imagined the slight pause before “best friend.”  “He actually just moved back here—divorced parents, so he’s been with his dad in China or somewhere, or maybe on an archeological dig. Watanuki lives here with their mom, barely knows the kid actually, but he seems nice enough. Obviously another victim of Sakura’s charms.” His face remains completely neutral as he says all this. Kurogane has no idea how he does it.

 

As it turns out, one of his students knows this Sakura girl too. Tomoyo Daidouji, his favorite student (although he will never, ever admit this) turns out to be her best friend. 

 

He shouldn’t be surprised, really—it’s a small town, and an even smaller school. He only finds this out because he suddenly connects the dots when she gushes for the millionth time about how cute someone named “Sakura” is and so on. He’s heard the name before, of course—she’s always talking about the girl, even when she’s supposed to be concentrating on something else. He has a hard time getting her to shut up most of the time. Despite that, though, she’s really grown on him. Somewhere deep down, he’s come to the slightly worrying realization that she reminds him of his mother.

 

“I saw your Sakura today, you know,” he says to her after class, when he can get a word in edgewise, that is.

 

“Oh! Did you go to the Cat’s Eye this morning?” Tomoyo beams at him as she pulls her street clothes from her locker and sails into the dressing room.

 

“Yeah, I did. I see why you’re always talking about her,” he admits, raising his voice a little so she can hear him behind the screen.

 

“Isn’t she the cutest thing ever?” Tomoyo almost screeches, emerging in a superhuman amount of time for someone who’s just changed into something THAT frilly. Kurogane is baffled by how all the pieces of dark blue fabric even fit together, but it appears to be a dress with a lot of cutout… things and bows. So many bows. She bounces to a bench in the common area and sits down to pull on her shoes—knee-high boots today, brown with bright blue laces.

 

“She’s, uh.” Kurogane does not use words like  _ cute _ . “Nice. Her coworker’s a pain in the ass, though.”

 

“Oh, you mean Fai? He owns the café! I don’t know what you mean, I think he’s just wonderful.” She stands up quickly in a cascade of ruffles.

 

“You  _ would _ ,” he mutters. He wonders if Fai has let her dress him up in one of those abominable creations of hers. If he hasn’t yet, Kurogane’s sure he’ll be wrangled into it eventually. Tomoyo sees people as giant dolls a lot of the time. Even Kurogane hasn’t been able to avoid one or two of her “fittings.” Knowing Fai, he’s probably  _ volunteered _ . He makes a “tch” noise under his breath.

 

“You know which of her coworkers actually  _ is _ a pain in the ass, though? Her brother,” Tomoyo says in the tone of one who has juicy gossip to share. “I mean, Touya’s great and all, but he’s so overprotective! He doesn’t even need the summer job, he’s just doing it to keep an eye on her.”

 

Kurogane doesn’t remember seeing anyone besides Sakura and the newfound bane of his existence, and says as much.

 

“Oh, that’s because Fai won’t let him have the same shift as she does most of the time,” Tomoyo says, giggling. “He makes up excuses and all, but he’s just trying to let her have a little freedom. Normally Touya’s away at college, but since he’s back for the summer… well, you know what brothers are like.” Kurogane, an only child, doesn’t, and neither does Tomoyo, who only has the one sister, but they both understand anyway.

 

He goes back to the café. Despite himself, he’s curious about that kid, and about Fai and what he’s hiding. Soon he’s going every morning—the coffee is addictive, much better than Starbucks’. He pretends to himself that’s the only reason.

 

Syaoran’s in there practically all the time—eventually, he gets comfortable enough to just sit at one of the tables and study, and sometimes Sakura comes over and talks to him on breaks. Kurogane has no idea what he’s studying, since it’s the end of June, for crying out loud, but the kid’s obviously the hugest dork to ever dork and seems to actually  _ enjoy _ studying.

 

Fai writes a different hideously misspelled name on his cup each time, each more obnoxious than the last. Once he just draws a caricature of a grumpy puppy. He seems to enjoy Kurogane’s frustrated growls and dodging the stirrers Kurogane always tosses at him. One day he and Sakura come in wearing cat ears. Kurogane isn’t sure if it’s meant to be a publicity stunt or if it’s simply to annoy him and fluster Syaoran. If it’s the latter, it works. (Considering Fai’s fashion sense, though, it may well have been intended as a  _ fashion statement _ . That man considers the strangest things stylish.)

 

He starts talking to the kids, gradually at first, then so often that it seems like a normal part of his day. He learns about Syaoran’s interest in archeology and how he’s trying to teach himself several different ancient languages, and Sakura tells him about the movie she’s working on with Tomoyo and shows him the stuffed animals they make together. He hears stories from her childhood about the crazy things Tomoyo made her do—all entirely believable, although they might not be to some. They both tell him about their brothers, Sakura whispering as if Touya will walk in at any second (which he might). Sakura seems to love Touya a lot, and she even seems to understand that he’s only trying to protect her. Of course, Kurogane thinks wryly, a twentysomething martial arts instructor is probably the exact sort of person he doesn’t want her talking to…

 

Syaoran’s brother, Kimihiro, seems to be almost like a stranger to him—they don’t see each other all that often and living together has been weird for them. They have a lot in common, though, and they’ve been getting along very well, geeking out about folklore and such. Syaoran says, with a laugh, that Kimihiro reminds him a little of Kurogane himself—“especially the way you fight with Fai, it’s just like him and Shizuka!”. It takes him a second to work out that Shizuka is his own friend Doumeki. Who actually has a first name. Right.

 

“It is not!” he roars, to a chorus of giggles from the kids and Fai. After all, Doumeki says he and this Kimihiro kid are  _ best friends _ . In no way are he and Fai anything  _ approaching  _ best friends. He’s disgusted by the thought, and says so. They giggle more.

 

Eventually he goes there for lunch every other day, too, and has lunch at the studio with Doumeki the other days. Fai is constantly trying to get him to try increasingly sugary desserts, which he refuses. Once Fai just shoves a particularly chocolaty monstrosity into his gaping mouth when he goes to yell at him for something or other. He hates to admit it, but it’s really good. He will never, ever tell Fai this.

 

Touya and Sakura both start having to work full-time in order to cater to their ever-increasing pool of customers. Kurogane is pretty sure that Syaoran practically lives in the shop by now, but Touya keeps stopping Sakura from talking to him, muttering about how he “doesn’t like that kid.” Knowing better than to risk Touya’s wrath, Kurogane stays away from her too, instead sitting companionably at Syaoran’s table and reading manga or scrolling through the news on his phone while Syaoran studies his Latin or Sanskrit or ancient runes or whatever. Once Syaoran comes across a passage in Japanese, which he can’t read, and Kurogane translates it for him without being asked. When the shop is less busy, Fai starts coming over and offering to help, too, and to everyone’s surprise he can read runes as if he’s grown up knowing them and has a seemingly endless Latin vocabulary. Kurogane is suspicious, but he’s not entirely sure of what. Sakura watches sadly from behind the counter and occasionally exchanges smiles with Syaoran when she thinks the watchful eye of her brother is turned away.

 

One day in mid-July something weird happens. Someone walks in, and Sakura, Touya and Syaoran all react like they’ve just seen a ghost. 

 

“Yukito!” they all gasp, almost simultaneously. The guy could almost  _ be _ a ghost, Kurogane thinks, with that silvery hair, pale skin, and delicate features. He can’t quite tell the color of his eyes behind those big round glasses, but his mind fills them in as pale and washed-out like the rest of him. (He later learns they’re a warm amber.)

 

Yukito looks almost as surprised to see them. “Touya!” he exclaims first, an odd look in his eyes as he looks at him. After a long moment of staring at each other, they hug. It looks a little awkward, as far as Kurogane can tell from his vantage point on a barstool at the window, but he’s not sure why.

 

They break apart and he looks at Sakura, almost equally strangely, and says “Sakura! You look so grown-up! How long has it been?” and hugs her too. 

 

He obviously struggles to place Syaoran, but eventually says “Oh my god,  _ Syaoran Li _ ? You look so old! I almost didn't recognize you!” They do a sort of awkward hug/handshake/clap on the back…  _ thing _ that is almost painful to look at. Syaoran looks like he’s dying slowly. Kurogane is very confused. So is Sakura, he realizes—she looks like she’s just witnessed something earthshattering.

 

He gets up from the bar and backs away slowly, not wanting to get involved. They’re all sort of standing awkwardly near the door and Kurogane would like nothing more than to retreat to somewhere he can’t witness something so obviously personal. He’s literally backing away now, trying not to call attention to himself but also trying to keep an eye on them so he can be out of the way, and suddenly he nearly falls over backwards onto Fai, who giggles a little and catches him around the waist with surprisingly strong hands. He’s so focused on the weirdness he’s just witnessed that he doesn’t even remember to be angry when Fai holds onto him for just a little longer than is necessary, drawing him back into a dark corner of the shop. Still uncomfortably close, the barista moves his hand to Kurogane’s shoulder and whispers in his ear, standing on tiptoes to reach properly, “I think that’s a high school friend of Touya’s. From the way Sakura talks about him, she had a crush on him when she was little, and from the way Touya refuses to talk about him, something weird happened between them and they haven’t spoken since they both went to college.”

 

There’s no one else in the shop—it’s not a busy time of day, and normally they spend this time just hanging out and talking. Kurogane  _ should _ be practicing or something, but his next class isn’t until three and he’s taken to just staying in the shop until then. He’s entirely welcome to do this, of course, but until very recently he simply hasn’t had anywhere else to go and so usually spends the time in between his 9AM private lesson and his three o’clock class at the studio. From three (the beginner class, which includes the littlest kids) it’s basically nonstop private lessons and a couple of classes, culminating in the advanced class from eight to nine. Tomoyo’s his 4:30 lesson—she can’t fit anything else in, apparently, even in the summer. He eats takeout in between the 5:30 and his 7:00 class and goes home to his empty apartment at nine. Lately he’s begun to realize just how lonely that existence is.

 

They leave the odd reunion to work out their problems and slip out the back door. Fai is giggling again. Kurogane isn’t even annoyed any more, and he wonders what the hell is happening to him. He is annoyed, though, when Fai grabs his wrist and starts dragging him off somewhere, all the while babbling on about something. Kurogane catches something about “you’ll like this, Kuro-tan”—always a bad sign when Fai says it. Lately Fai has taken to shortening his name and adding the weirdest Japanese honorifics he can find on Google Translate, in order to cause maximum annoyance. It’s working. Sometimes the idiot refers to him as a little girl, as he’s just done; other times it’s onomatopoeia for barks or meows, like he’s a damn pet or something, and sometimes it’s  _ –sama _ in a mock show of respect. At first he tried to convince himself that Fai just had no idea what he was saying, but he knows that's not true. Fai knows  _ exactly _ what he’s saying. At least he pronounces it fairly accurately—Kurogane supposes he should be grateful for small favors.

 

“Shouldn't you be taking care of your café? You know, the one you own?” he says, trying to regain control of his arm and failing. Fai is a  _ lot  _ stronger than he looks.

 

“Oh, don’t worry, if any customers come in Sakura and Touya know how to take care of them. Anyway, you’re always yelling at me to take a break once in a while—so I’m taking a break! With you!” Fai turns around and beams at him, still walking backwards with Kurogane’s wrist in both of his hands. It is true that Kurogane is beginning to suspect him of overworking himself, and has confronted him with that fact multiple times. The idiot doesn’t even know how to take care of himself, and Kurogane’s not sure if he’s been sleeping lately. Not that Kurogane cares particularly, he just hates to see people wasting their lives and expending all their energy on other people. Fai treats his own life carelessly, as if he isn’t even important. Kurogane  _ knows  _ it’s got something to do with whatever he’s hiding, which he still hasn’t been able to figure out, although he has realized that Fai is lonely and tries very hard to hide that fact.

 

Fai drags him down an alley behind the café. Kurogane has never been in this part of town before and he has no idea what Fai wants to show him— _ oh. _

 

They stand in front of a small shop nestled into a corner—if Fai hadn’t shown him, Kurogane would have had no idea this was here. The sign in the window reads “DimENSioN CoMiCS” in wavy letters that look almost like smoke, an odd combination of capital and lowercase. Smaller all-caps letters below read “COMICS*GRAPHIC NOVELS*GAMES*BOOKS*MERCH.” He just stares at it for a minute. How did Fai  _ know _ ?

 

“You mentioned being annoyed at having to order comics and manga online,” Fai explains, “but there’s a comic shop right here in town! It’s just a little hard to find, so I figured I’d show you sometime.”

 

Kurogane is actually slightly speechless. This is—really  _ sweet  _ of Fai, and apparently he’s noticed a lot more than he lets on. He’d had no idea that Fai had even been paying attention to that conversation—he’d been talking to Sakura about manga a few days before. Sakura is a fan of the “magical girl” genre, and so (although he admits this very rarely) is Kurogane. He spent the whole conversation trying to pretend he didn’t know anything about the Sailor Moon manga that Sakura was carefully explaining to him, saying “you might like it if you just try it!” Eventually he just tried to derail the conversation towards shounen before he accidentally let something slip. He wonders if Fai suspects him.

 

He pushes the door open, and an oddly hollow-sounding bell rings inside. He’s greeted by a harried-looking worker who asks if he and Fai need help with anything. Fai’s obviously been here a few times before—he greets the worker with a “Hi, Kimihiro!” and Kurogane realizes that this is Syaoran’s brother. He introduces himself as a friend of Syaoran’s and Kimihiro smiles at him, then gestures at different areas of the shop and rattles off what’s where.

 

“Uh, and I  _ think _ there are some Totoro plushies over there behind the Attack on Titan display—sorry, Yuuko’s been reorganizing again and sometimes she gets into a bit of a mood. It’s impossible to actually tell where anything is in here, to be honest. Whenever she gets a new obsession, well—she sort of—destroys things in an attempt to make everyone else share it. Don’t worry, though, we never get rid of  _ anything _ .” He winces at this. “At all,” he adds wryly.

 

Kurogane nods in sympathy. This Yuuko woman sounds a bit like Tomoyo when she’s in one of her moods. It’s bad enough teaching her, he can’t even  _ imagine _ what it would be like to work for someone like her.

 

Glancing at Fai, Kimihiro asks carefully if either of them will be needing anything from the back room. Fai is very quick to answer no, Kurogane notices, wondering what exactly is back there. He almost asks for something himself, but since he has no idea what it would be, he could end up with anything from a nice new pair of fuzzy handcuffs to a black-market liver. (His imagination may or may not be running away with him a little.)

 

He forgets all about the back room when he sees the manga section. Before he knows it, he’s got an armful of manga (some in the original Japanese), plus Punisher and Deadpool trades he’s been meaning to get and a bunch of issues of Elektra and Black Widow, which Kimihiro and Fai both highly recommend (read: almost force him to get). He eyes an awesome-looking Batman action figure and a Game of Thrones sword replica, too, but forces himself to look away. His paycheck isn’t  _ that _ big, and anyway it’s just stupid junk. (Damn, that’s a cool lightsaber lamp, he thinks, then mentally kicks himself.)

 

Kimihiro gives him some kind of friends and family discount, surprisingly enough. Kurogane supposes he’s earned it, kind of, since they have all these degrees-of-separation type connections, but he wonders if it’s because of Fai. He only remembers the mysterious back room when they’re walking back to the café in something like a companionable silence. He knows better than to ask about it.

 

xXx

 

The morning after the, er,  _ incident _ , Kurogane’s coffee cup doesn’t have a name on it at all. Instead, there’s a phone number scrawled in Fai’s artfully messy handwriting, above something that could be a scribbly heart or a doodle of a cat or both. It looks almost illegible, but it’s perfectly clear once you get past all of the loops and flourishes. He saves it in his phone under “Idiot” and doesn’t call or text it; it just sort of sits there, waiting. (Once he saw Fai’s phone when Sakura called him to say she’d be in a bit late. He has her saved under a cat emoji and a cherry blossom emoji. That’s it. No actual name. He shudders to think what Fai will save  _ his  _ number as, if Kurogane ever ends up giving it to him, that is.)

 

The arrival of Yukito, who soon starts spending a lot of his time in the shop, has the unprecedented effect of calming Touya down. In fact, he lets Sakura and Syaoran hang out whenever they want and doesn’t even seem annoyed when Sakura neglects her work to go and talk to the kid. Kurogane still isn’t quite sure what’s going on, but he’s guessing that they’ve made up after whatever fight they had in high school, and then some. They act basically married, and he’d be very surprised if they  _ weren’t _ dating, although he hasn’t seen any concrete evidence of this yet (well, there’s the cute nicknames, but apparently they’ve done that since high school).

 

As for Sakura and Syaoran, their relationship seems to be moving along too, although at the pace of a diseased snail. They’re both so damn shy that at this rate they won’t get any kind of confession out of each other until they’re forty. Kurogane thinks they’re both idiots. He and Fai commiserate about this more and more often. Fai occasionally tries to play matchmaker; Kurogane just wants to scream in both their faces, but Fai favors a more subtle approach, much to his annoyance.

 

Eventually, they learn more about the odd encounter with Yukito. It takes the kids a couple of days to open up, but Sakura tells Fai and Syaoran tells Kurogane and they both piece together the details in whispers in the back room. According to Syaoran, Kurogane tells Fai, he’d lived here when he was fairly young, then moved away. (Fai knows this already because of Kimihiro from the comic store, much to Kurogane’s annoyance.) He’d had a little crush on Yukito, a high schooler at the time, but quickly gotten over that and gotten an even bigger crush on his classmate Sakura.

 

Fai interjects with what he’s learned from Sakura. “She didn’t remember Syaoran until this whole thing happened,” he confides. “For some reason she didn’t connect the dots, or maybe she’s blocked part of elementary school out of her memory because of something else that happened. Trauma can do that.” He seems like he’s speaking from personal experience, Kurogane notes with a stab of something like worry. “She did tell me that she had a huge crush on Yukito for a little while, too. Almost an obsession, it sounded like.”

 

This is the most serious he can remember Fai being. He hasn’t made a single joke or called Kurogane a dumb nickname or said anything weirdly flirty or flapped his arms around like a weirdo, and it scares the hell out of Kurogane.

 

Just as he is thinking this, Fai seems to come back to himself. “Oh my, we’re being terrible parents, Kuro-rin! We’re gossiping about our children while they’re right out there in the shop!” He makes a weird “hyuu” sort of noise, his attempt at whistling, and grins wildly.

 

“ _ Parents _ ?” Kurogane almost roars, just barely remembering to be quiet enough that the customers outside can’t hear him.

 

“Well, of course~! You’re normally such a good daddy~” Fai chirps, putting an arm around his shoulders.

 

Kurogane growls and puts Fai into a headlock. The obnoxious idiot slips away and runs off across the room, giggling like a maniac, as Kurogane finds a stack of coffee filters to toss at him and chases after him. It’s a very successful deflection, he has to admit later.

 

Fai starts overworking himself more and more. That smile gets more and more strained, and Kurogane seems to be the only one who notices anything. He’s opened the café for longer hours, hiring Syaoran to cover some of the shifts, and he’s trying to extend weekend hours to basically all day when before it had just been open for brunch. Kurogane doesn’t even think it’s a money thing—the café seems to be more than breaking even and has become a fairly popular hangout. Fai won’t let him look at the books, but he’s fairly sure they’re not struggling. He thinks Fai’s just desperately trying to fill up his time. He’s trying not to think about something, or maybe he’s just lonely and prefers to be surrounded by customers, but either way something is up. Kurogane realizes he has absolutely no idea what the guy does at night. Does he do  _ anything _ ? And if he does, is it more work, or a different job, or something weirder? (Something to do with Dimension Comics’ back room…?)

 

Kurogane keeps meaning to confront him about this, but he’s gotten so busy that he barely has a chance. Syaoran has started taking lessons from him at the studio, and he has to admit he’s really enjoying teaching the kid. He learns fast, and he seems to have some kind of intuitive idea of how to move, almost a muscle memory, although he claims to have no previous martial arts training. Summer classes are almost over, which means he’ll just have his handful of private lessons and a whole lot more free time until fall classes start up in October, but until then he has a lot of work to do. He gets home exhausted every day and starts falling asleep almost right away. He, too, is overworking himself, he realizes wryly. He’s one to talk.

 

He doesn’t go to the café as much for a little while. Things seem to be going okay when he stops in every day, though. Syaoran has found a new friend, a brash kid named Ryuu-ou who talks like an anime protagonist, and seems to be coming out of his shell quite a bit. Fai calls their relationship “adorable,” and Kurogane is hard pressed to disagree. Sakura and Tomoyo’s movie is coming along, or so he hears from both of them separately. When he asks what the movie is about, both give him such complicated explanations that he gives up trying to understand. He  _ thinks  _ it’s about a magical girl. Maybe. They’re trying to get Syaoran and Kimihiro involved, although both swear up and down that they can’t act worth anything. Tomoyo tells him she’s trying to cast Syaoran as the new love interest, with a knowing wink, and Kurogane smirks back at her. He and Fai won’t have to do anything after all, not with Tomoyo involved.

 

Finally, summer classes are over. Even Tomoyo tells him she wants to take a break from lessons and his other two regulars do, too. Only Syaoran wants to continue, which Kurogane doesn’t mind at all—in fact, he’s been giving the kid lessons for free, and he intends to continue. He suspects Syaoran will have a problem with this when he tries to pay for the lessons and Kurogane refuses. It will probably turn into some kind of argument. He doesn’t care.

 

Tomoyo steals his phone, texts herself, and puts her number into it under “Fave student ever! <3” He’s kind of pissed, but secretly pleased that she likes him enough to do this at all. He keeps meaning to change the name, but never seems to get around to it.

 

She texts him updates on the Sakura/Syaoran situation, and he returns the favor, although he stays out of her matchmaking business. He realizes belatedly that she has  _ created a Snapchat account for him  _ and proceeded to send him a bunch of random snaps. He keeps the account; he never had a reason for it before, but why not, right? She mostly sends him action shots from the movie set with captions like “Sakura is so cute in her costume <3” and “Working on a new magical girl outfit!” but occasionally she sends pictures of her dog or dumb selfies with ridiculous faces. Almost all of them have something to do with Sakura, he notices. 

 

She’s done more than just Snapchat, too—she’s even downloaded Instagram for him and created an account under the username black_steel, which is actually… not that bad of a username, considering. He’s impressed that she’s remembered what his name translates to. He might as well use it, since he actually has people to interact with on social media now; he rarely posts photos, though, only checks in occasionally to see what everyone’s up to (and if they’ve posted any candids of him, which he  _ will _ kill them for). He only follows a handful of people—Tomoyo, of course (she’s taken care of that for him), Sakura (also Tomoyo’s doing), Syaoran (eventually, from seeing his username around), and Fai (just to make sure he isn’t secretly posting weird photos of Kurogane).

 

He finally texts Fai the night after his classes are over, a Saturday. He’s not entirely sure why he does it—maybe he just wants some company—but before he knows it, he’s sent a text asking if Fai wants to go out for a drink sometime. The minute it sends, he wishes he hadn’t done it. He sounds like an  _ idiot _ and the way he’s phrased it is so  _ weird _ and you can’t tell what he’s actually asking for and has he even identified himself? Oh shit why did he do this why did he—

 

His phone lights up. There’s a little green message icon. He can’t breathe for a second. What is  _ wrong  _ with him?

 

“Sure! How’s tonight at like ten? Unless you’ve got plans—I haven’t. ^-^”

 

Fai  _ would _ use that cutesy emoticon. He’s definitely got the right number. He gulps and goes to his room, trying to find some clothes that make him look vaguely normal instead of the baggy sweatpants and muscle tank he’s been wearing around his apartment. Then he checks himself—he’s going to hang out with  _ Fai _ , for heaven’s sake. He could show up in full ninja getup and Fai wouldn’t see anything weird about it. He’d better change out of the sweatpants, though, he thinks, opting instead for his usual black jeans, a plain black t-shirt and his favorite leather jacket. His favorite combat boots sit in their usual place by the door; he won’t put them on yet, though, it’s only eight thirty— _ shit _ he hasn’t texted Fai back yet. He knew there was something he was forgetting.

 

He grabs his phone and hurriedly replies in the affirmative, sending it before he realizes he’s forgotten to specify a place. He doesn’t even know where Fai  _ lives _ . 

 

He wonders why he’s being so weird about this. It’s probably just because he hasn’t actually been this close to anyone for, well—years, actually. He’s good friends with Tomoyo, but there’s a considerable age gap and he sees her almost as a daughter; plus, it’s not like he actively hangs out with her. Technically, he gets paid to hang out with her. She has her own friends and her own life and their relationship is decidedly casual, and will probably mostly take place in Snapchats and texts until the school year starts up again. Doumeki’s a friend too, but Kurogane actually knows very little about him, and again, age gap. The other instructors just aren’t his type of people and he’s never made the effort to befriend them. The last time he had a real close friend that he hung out with and did stuff with was—was, uh—

 

He sighs. Who is he kidding? He barely talked to anyone in high school. In fact, he’d been a bit of a bully, although only to those who deserved it (e.g. the  _ worse _ bullies). He’s always sort of kept to himself, trying to push people away. His best friends as a kid were his parents, and when his mom died he’d kind of given up on people. When his dad died in an accident a year later, he’d  _ really _ given up. He can’t remember the last time he’s actually gone to a bar  _ with  _ someone rather than by himself.

 

His phone lights up again. It’s Fai, asking where he lives—“I’ll pick you up~” he says. Kurogane has a perfectly good motorcycle and perfectly good legs, but he appreciates the sentiment—good lord, since when has he started doing  _ that _ ?—and tells him.

 

He wonders when he stopped hating the guy and started actually (sort of) enjoying his company. It’s just sort of happened. Fai has grown on him, in a way. He can still be incredibly obnoxious and has the worst fashion sense Kurogane has ever seen—one day the guy came in wearing Crocs!  _ Crocs!  _ Unironically!—but at heart he’s just a really sweet, lonely person, an extrovert who probably hasn't gotten much of a chance to properly be one for most of his life. Kurogane is decidedly introverted, but he’s learning to appreciate people, and he’s always understood them.

 

He still has over an hour to kill, so he finally opens the Snapchats that have been sitting in his inbox all day. Nearly all of them are from Tomoyo, although she seems to have given out his username to several people, judging by the friend requests (which it takes him an embarrassingly long while to figure out how to get to; it isn’t  _ his  _ fault if the app has a really weird interface, is it?). One of them is obviously Syaoran, since his username is just his first and last name smushed together—just the sort of unimaginative thing that kid  _ would _ go for. He accepts that one and “sakura_k,” which is also pretty obvious, and “blueflourite,” which he figures is Fai (it is) and somehow even Doumeki has gotten his username somehow, or at least that’s who he assumes “silentarcher” must be after remembering that Doumeki’s given name is Shizuka. He doesn’t recognize the other two—either they’re friends of Tomoyo’s that he’s never met or spam. He accepts them anyway, after realizing that he needs to do this in order to see the snaps (what a dumb name, he thinks) they’ve sent him. They’re both ads, and after a little wrangling he figures out how to block them. This accounts for barely fifteen minutes. He sighs.

 

Just as he’s about to close out of the app, he gets another snap—snapchat—thing from Tomoyo. It’s a selfie with the caption “so u finally read ur snaps!!” and a (somewhat manically) smiling emoji. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to respond to this—with a selfie of his own? He feels weird taking random selfies. Or any selfies. The entire concept of selfies seems strange to him, actually. Then he sees that she’s sent him a chat in the app. Grumbling to himself, he figures out how to get to it, wondering why she doesn’t just text like a normal person. It just says “hiiiii~” and he glares, then deliberately texts her back instead.

 

“Is it really necessary to send ten snapchats a day?” he types, shaking his head at the screen, then sends in another text, “Or to use the chat function when we  _ do  _ have each other’s phone numbers?”

 

Tomoyo takes a little while to respond; he imagines she’s giggling too hard to type. When she finally does respond, it’s to say “but its so much fun~ anyway i was just showing you how to use the app, i dont normally use the chat thingie either. but you might want to if you didnt have someones #!”

 

He argues halfheartedly with her for a while, then the conversation devolves into gossip about the movie. Tomoyo informs him with some measure of pride that they’ve managed to convince Syaoran to play Sakura’s love interest, a very impressive feat considering Syaoran’s modesty and awkwardness around Sakura. When pressed, she admits that she may or may not have…  _ omitted _ certain parts of the truth in order to convince him, which makes a lot more sense.

 

“hes gonna DIE when he sees her in her adorable maid outfit!” she types, and Kurogane can just see the triumphant expression on her face, no selfies needed.

 

“You’re making her wear WHAT now? I thought this was a magical girl thing?”

 

“oh yeah it is! but her chara works in a maid cafe, of course, because its kinda traditional you know? like tokyo mew mew or something! but its meant as like a parody/deconstruction, like pmmm!”

 

Sadly, Kurogane knows exactly what she’s talking about, although Tokyo Mew Mew is far too cutesy for his tastes. His own quiet enjoyment of the magical girl genre was kickstarted by being half-forced to watch Sailor Moon by some of his online friends in high school, who told him it was a classic even if it was kinda girly, and as several of them  _ were  _ girls they didn’t mind so much. After he’d watched the entire thing, addicted despite himself, he’d gone on to other series—the smarter ones, of course, not the ridiculous pink fluffy things. He’d loved Puella Magi Madoka Magica for deconstructing the whole idea of the thing and being  _ really really dark _ , making it pretty much the only one he might actually own up to having watched.

 

He takes the text without explanation, assuming that since Tomoyo presumes his familiarity anyway he might as well not make a fuss about it, and just continues the conversation. 

 

Suddenly he glances at the time—he’s quite lost track, caught up in trying to understand Tomoyo’s enthusiastic descriptions of the movie. It’s nine fifty-seven, he reads with no comprehension at first, and then it hits him that it’s  _ nine fifty-seven _ and he’s meeting Fai at  _ ten _ and he all but races to pull on his shoes and fix his hair a bit in the mirror.

 

Tomoyo has texted him again, something else about Syaoran’s character and could Kurogane teach him some moves to use that would look good on camera? He glances at the phone distractedly and quickly sends off a “Sure” while looking out the window for any sign of a car. Then he realizes that he’s cutting off this conversation kind of rudely and amends his previous text with “Sorry, gotta go, I’m meeting someone.”

 

“Fai?” she responds immediately, and he almost throws the phone across the room. Does she not think he has other friends? Wallet, he needs his wallet, and keys—he panics a little again.

 

“Yes actually, although I do have other friends,” he responds; the slightly snarky tone belies his nerves. Fai is a bit late, or maybe he’s lost, or maybe isn’t sure where to go. Kurogane is  _ not  _ panicking.

 

His phone buzzes again, and this time it isn’t Tomoyo. Fai is outside; there was a bit of traffic, he’s sorry he’s late. Everything is fine, Kurogane tells himself, and just barely remembers to lock his apartment and make sure he has his keys.

 

Tomoyo texts him as he’s on his way down in the building’s slightly rickety elevator, wishing him good luck, though he has no idea what  _ she  _ thinks he needs it for. He almost never takes the elevator and isn’t entirely sure why he’s doing it now—for some reason he seems to feel like he’s in a huge hurry, even though there’s really not that much to hurry  _ for _ . He’s just going to hang out with a friend, he tells himself; there’s no need to make this weird.  _ It’s already weird _ , his brain insists on telling him. He wishes it would shut up, not for the first time.

 

Fai drives a powder blue VW Beetle, a convertible; Kurogane supposes he shouldn’t be surprised, considering. He almost automatically makes a sarcastic comment about the ridiculousness of the car and how he wouldn’t be caught dead in it and might as well just walk, but his heart isn’t quite in it. He reluctantly gets in and pokes the ridiculous feather charm thing hanging from the mirror, which he informs Fai is against the law and also really dumb-looking and why does he even have it?

 

“It’s a dreamcatcher,” Fai replies, laughing; he’s got the top down, even though it’s dark out, and he’s wearing a  _ scarf  _ of all things. If the sun were out Kurogane doesn’t doubt that he’d also be wearing big sunglasses and probably a hat, like an elegant lady from the 50s. It’s a hot summer night, although it’s calmed down some from the almost stifling humidity during the day, and everything takes on a weird sort of glow in the streetlights.

 

“What, so do you sleep in your car?” He… he  _ doesn’t _ , does he? He certainly doesn’t  _ need  _ to with the café… right?

 

“Well, not  _ usually _ , but I do travel a lot and it’s nice to have!” When Kurogane’s only response is a disbelieving grunt, he elaborates, “It’s good luck, you know. It catches nightmares and evil spirits and things! But of course you don’t believe in such things, do you, Kuro-run?” He turns a little, laughing again, and lightly flicks Kurogane on the arm, and Kurogane yells at him to keep his eyes on the road (even though there are very few other cars on the road at the moment).

 

(Kurogane does believe in some “such things,” actually, although he is a skeptic about a lot of them. For example, UFOs are all hoaxes, although aliens probably exist, as it would be supremely idiotic for humankind to presume itself the only intelligent species in the universe; he’s argued this point many times. Although he’s firmly agnostic and isn’t really sure what higher power to believe in, if any, he thinks there could probably be spirits somewhere; certainly his mom had hundreds of stories about them, many from back home in Japan. His dad had believed in them as well, and a couple times Kurogane even thought he’d seen a ghost, or spirit… thing, but it was never proven. Nevertheless, he thinks horror movies are ridiculous and hates the very notion of magic.)

 

The night is a bit of a blur, although he doesn’t drink that much at all and anyway has an almost superhuman tolerance for alcohol (it’s the height, probably). He’s a bit on edge the whole time, not really sure what to expect. He does end up kind of having fun, though, despite the mini-argument with Fai over whether a particular song is a deep and meaningful love story or trite crap. Kurogane doesn’t really understand the appeal of songs like that in general, while Fai is evidently a hopeless romantic and even seems to agree with the sentiment expressed in the song, which is a knight-in-shining-armor deal, all about wanting someone to take you away. Kurogane thinks you can very well just take  _ yourself _ away, no use whining about it, and Fai says he’s got it all wrong. They’re still arguing about it when they get in the car, and Fai pointedly puts on “Holding Out For A Hero.” Five minutes of ear bombardment later, Kurogane almost storms out of the car to escape the barrage of overly-peppy 80s pop and Fai’s hopeless laughter (he’s moved on to Take On Me, just to watch Kurogane squirm), and barely remembers to say good night. It takes him twenty minutes of his favorite blend of classic rock, punk and metal to purge his ears.

 

Sunday is Sakura’s day off, but Saturday is Touya’s; Kurogane has been meaning to talk to Touya anyway, so he goes into the shop Sunday for breakfast. He raises an eyebrow to Fai, but purposely goes to Touya’s register; Fai gives him an understanding nod.

 

“I’ll have that Danish and a small black coffee, please,” he says, trying his hardest to sound at least mildly polite. “I’m Kurogane, by the way, I don’t think we’ve been officially introduced.”

 

“Touya, hi. You’re… a friend of that kid’s, right? Syaoran?” Touya bags up his Danish and starts the coffee.

 

“Yeah, I’m—” his kendo instructor? Is Syaoran actually a friend of his now? “—yeah,” he finishes, lamely. “I’ve been talking to Sakura some, too. Good kid,” he says, high praise for him.

 

“Yeah, she is.” Touya smiles at this praise of his sister, a good sign. “I worry about her, though.”

 

“I can see why, but honestly I think she can take care of herself just fine—and if she can’t, she can probably sic Tomoyo on anyone who was bothering her.” He laughs ruefully.

 

Touya chuckles, too. “That’s probably true, although Tomoyo gets her into more trouble than she gets her out of. They’re together right now, of course, shooting that movie of theirs, and so’s that kid.”

 

“Syaoran’s a good kid too, you know. He would never hurt her, and if he did by accident he’d probably die or something.” Kurogane takes his coffee and wonders if he should sit down. Before he can decide, Touya announces that he’s taking his break and beckons Kurogane to a table.

 

“I’m starting to see that,” Touya admits as they sit down. “I’m just so used to being a protective big brother, you know? I’ve been getting a little better about that, though. Yuki’s been yelling at me,” he says with a laugh.

 

Kurogane is intensely curious about whatever’s been going on with those two, but isn’t about to ask. Luckily, Touya seems to have decided to tell him. Obviously his look was more openly curious than he’d thought.

 

“We were best friends in high school,” Touya explains. “And, well—I kept meaning to tell him how I felt about him, but there was always some kind of interruption. I almost did the really stupid cliché thing of writing it in his yearbook when we graduated, but then I thought better of it. It’s kind of awful to be in love with your best friend and not know whether to say anything, you know?”

 

Kurogane has absolutely no idea how that must feel, since he’s neither been in love nor had a best friend, but he nods anyway.

 

“And then we both went away to college and we were pretty far away from each other, and we kind of stopped keeping in contact because I—both of us, I guess—felt so awkward about it but didn’t feel like I—we—could say anything. And then he showed up a couple weeks ago and I was like okay, this time I’m not gonna be an idiot about it and I’m just going to say something, and obviously he had the same idea because we both blurted it out at the same time.” He laughs.

 

“Well, congratulations, then,” Kurogane says, not quite knowing what else to say. He’s very happy for them, of course, but he can’t  _ imagine _ how they could have kept being such idiots about each other for such a long time. Evidently it runs in the family, since Sakura seems to be going the same route with Syaoran.

 

Something about what Touya has said gives him an odd sort of déjà vu feeling, like there’s something he should be seeing but isn’t, but he can’t imagine what it might be. He thinks about it on and off all day, which he spends in a much-deserved Netflix marathon, and finally realizes what it is halfway through an episode of  _ Supernatural _ . “ _ It’s kind of awful to be in love with your best friend _ ,” Touya had said, and he’d thought that it runs in the family. He can’t believe he didn’t realize this sooner. He’s been completely blind, he berates himself. But then again, he met Sakura considerably after Tomoyo and he—no, there’s really no excuse for it.  _ For someone who thinks he’s so goddamn perceptive-! _ he thinks angrily.

 

Because of course, Tomoyo is in love with Sakura, and probably has been for quite a long time. And Sakura has absolutely no idea. Who  _ else _ is in love that he’s missing?

 

He has a new appreciation for Tomoyo. She seems perfectly content being just friends with the person she’s in love with, and even setting her up with someone else.  _ How? _

 

He texts Fai about it, with a “did YOU know about this??” and finds to his annoyance that he did.

 

“Does Sakura know?” Kurogane asks him.

 

“No, she’s pretty clueless that way, haha. She can’t even tell that SYAORAN likes her.” This is punctuated by an emoji perhaps best described as *sweatdrop*. 

 

“But how can Tomoyo live that way? It seems… awful, to be so close to the person you love but never be able to be more than friends.”

 

“For her, the most important thing is that Sakura is happy. If that means Sakura is with someone else, then that’s okay. Anyway, isn’t that what love is, really?”

 

Kurogane supposes he could do it, if it came to that, although he thinks he’s too stubborn for something like that, and probably too possessive. “How do you know this, anyway?” he types, almost a little jealous. He’s known Tomoyo for  _ way _ longer, and anyway, to his knowledge Fai hasn’t exchanged more than two words with her.

 

“Oh, she told me once. I’ve been shopping with her and Sakura a few times, and we got to talking while Sakura was trying some stuff on, and I asked about it.”

 

What, do people just confide in this guy? What  _ is  _ it about him? Also, he goes  _ shopping  _ with them, Kurogane suddenly thinks. Good lord, that explains…. something. Not a lot, but something. Still doesn’t explain the Crocs. Definitely explains the one time he wore what could best be described as a crop top, though.

  
He shakes his head a little, thinking about that  _ supremely _ weird day a couple of weeks ago, and wonders why his face feels hot. Secondhand embarrassment, probably. The image is somewhat burned into his memory, in a degree of detail that’s somewhat worrying, and he finds himself wondering if that was part of a tattoo he’d seen below the edge of the shirt on Fai’s back, and if so, what the rest of it looks like. This at least is a better track for his mind to go on than thinking about how incredibly pale Fai’s skin is or about how his initial assessment that he had no muscle to speak of was very wrong, both of which almost make his mind go spiraling off into You’re Making This Weird territory. Studiously, he glares at his own tattoo, a silver dragon curling around his left bicep, and concentrates on the detail of a patch of scales. He spends the rest of the evening distracting himself with Game of Thrones.


	2. Chapter 2

 

Now that he has all this free time, he’s not really sure what to do with himself. More often than not, he ends up in one of two places—either the coffee shop or the comic shop. On his second visit to Dimension Comics, he meets the elusive Yuuko, who had been out the first time he’d gone in; it goes about as well as you might expect. On seeing him, she immediately squeals and tells him what a  _ perfect _ Batman he’d make, asking if he’s ever cosplayed. Blushing, he mutters that he hasn’t, although he’s always wanted to (he omits this part). She manages to coax him into a Batman costume that she just  _ happens  _ to have lying around and somehow even convinces him to buy it. He protests weakly, but he’s always loved the Dark Knight and secretly enjoys every second of it. Kimihiro gives him a sympathetic look when he thinks Yuuko’s eagle eye is turned away, and Kurogane quickly drops the slight smile that seems to have made its way onto his face. At least now he has a Halloween costume.

 

The rest of his free time seems to be spent increasingly often with Fai, who drags him to all kinds of things, some more enjoyable than others. Weird coffee shops to see bands no one’s ever heard of, jazz clubs, record shops… Some of the theater is quite good, and he quite likes the classic films, but he absolutely draws the line at shopping, unless, as he tells Fai about every other day, it’s to buy him a new car to replace the Monstrosity, as he’s taken to referring to the blue Beetle. In return, he drags Fai to rock concerts and biker bars, and even a car show, which Fai actually enjoys, surprisingly enough. Sometimes the kids go along, especially when it’s a mini road trip to a museum or some such. These are usually far more tame than the rest of the outings, which are becoming a sort of competition between Fai’s attempts at high culture and Kurogane’s, well, counterculture, mostly places remembered from his younger, considerably more punk phase. Both of them are exaggerating quite a lot, of course. Kurogane is not nearly this punk (anymore) and while he considers himself quite manly, he’s not  _ monster truck  _ manly. Fai, in his turn, is definitely not  _ that _ sophisticated or hipster, even if he does insist on wearing those ridiculous glasses that Kurogane is sure he doesn’t need every time they go to some indie thing, and Kurogane is  _ pretty  _ sure he’s not actually that effeminate, either.

 

Fai even makes them go to an opera once. Despite himself, Kurogane actually enjoys it somewhat; it’s Wagner’s  _ Flying Dutchman _ and the plot is engrossing, if the singing is a lot to get used to. Syaoran loves it, probably because it’s based on a folktale, and Sakura is impressed by the singing and gets a little emotional about the love story. They get into a spirited argument in the car about whether the soprano did the right thing; Sakura and Fai both defend her quite strongly, while Syaoran and Kurogane, despite both empathizing with the Dutchman, think she hasn’t been quite fair to either him or her hunter boyfriend.

 

“How can you fall in love with a  _ picture _ , anyway? I mean, he’s just a legend, how’s she supposed to know that it’s real?” Kurogane says at one point, still annoyed by what he sees as somewhat of a plot hole.

 

“I think it’s romantic,” says Sakura, sighing dreamily. Syaoran looks as if he’s trying desperately to figure out how he can use this to his advantage. Poor kid.

 

Without warning, Fai launches into a detailed analysis of Senta’s motives, citing abandonment issues (her father always being out on his ship) and longing to escape her own stagnant life. “She sympathizes with him because she feels trapped and out of control, too,” he says seriously, and Kurogane gives him a calculating sideways look. He’s thought about this way too much. Why has he thought about this way too much?

 

Then Fai abruptly yells “Punch Buggy!” and punches Kurogane on the arm, ignoring his protests that it only works if you  _ see _ a Bug and not if you’re  _ in  _ one, and they spend the rest of the ride home arguing the rules of various car games.

 

The end of summer comes far too fast. A week before Labor Day, Tomoyo and Sakura announce in a large group text that they’re going to be filming at a beach a few hours’ drive away on Labor Day weekend and everyone is welcome to come with them. Kurogane thinks they’ve left it a bit late; Tomoyo explains to him that they’ve only just realized the necessity for the beach scene or whatever it is and now’s their last chance to do it, and anyway everyone’s free to come up for the weekend, right?

 

He accepts, grudgingly, because he has nothing better to do and hopes he can keep the kids out of trouble. However, he hates the beach, and makes no secret of this fact. He’s even more appalled when he finds he’s somehow walked into an entire weekend at the Daidoujis’ beach house and that  _ so many other people _ are coming along, including, bizarrely, Yuuko Ichihara. He is definitely not going to survive this weekend, he tells Doumeki despairingly over text, and is annoyed when Doumeki says neutrally that he’s looking forward to it. Fai is coming too, of course, and makes a fuss about packing and more  _ shopping _ and somehow manages to fit what must be an entire month’s worth of clothes into a fairly normal-sized suitcase.

 

The day before the Trip of Doom, Kurogane counts the people who responded affirmatively in the group text. Himself, Fai, Sakura and Syaoran, of course; counting Tomoyo; Kimihiro, invited by Syaoran, and Doumeki, invited by Kimihiro; Yuuko, who seems to have invited herself; someone named Himawari, who appears to be a friend of several people’s; Ryuu-ou, Syaoran’s friend, and two childhood friends of Sakura and Tomoyo’s, someone-or-other Yamazaki (who seems to be one of those last-name-only people) and a girl named Chiharu. It’s an insane amount of people, even without Yukito and Touya, who have gone back to school already. Apparently Tomoyo’s mother isn’t coming along, either. Kurogane isn’t exactly sure how much adult supervision he, Fai and Yuuko will be, and lies awake that night worrying about it. Yuuko, he thinks, should not count as an adult at all, and neither should Fai, really, which just leaves… him. Great.

 

The day dawns, and he finds to his absolute horror that they will be taking two cars: Tomoyo’s mom’s minivan, driven by Yuuko because Tomoyo only has her permit (although somehow Kurogane thinks that Tomoyo is probably a much safer driver), and Fai’s stupid Beetle. Apparently between all, what, TWELVE of them they can’t manage to scrape up more than two cars that are free that weekend. He quickly offers to take his motorcycle and meet them there but is instantly shot down for reasons like “you’ll get lost” (he resents this; his sense of direction is impeccable) or “it’ll be so tiring for you!” or “what if it rains really hard?” or “where will you put your luggage?” or “it’s just more fun to do a roadtrip in a car~” ( _ guess _ who this one was. Just guess).

 

Somehow Kurogane gets stuck riding in the Monstrosity, along with Fai, Syaoran, Ryuu-ou and this Yamazaki kid, who literally never opens his eyes and spends the entire trip spouting increasingly obnoxious and implausible “facts” about literally everything they see. At least Kurogane gets shotgun, since there is no WAY he could have fit in the back (which, by the way, was only designed for two people, a fact which he reminds everyone of  _ multiple _ times).

 

Kurogane really, really hates road trips. The fact that he’s shotgun means that he gets stuck navigating for Fai; it also technically means he  _ should  _ be car DJ, but his music keeps getting shot down and the mp3 cord keeps getting grabbed and used for a different phone or iPod every two seconds. They somehow manage to lose Yuuko’s minivan on the highway (not hard, as it looks like literally every other mom van) and are stuck finding their own way through a combination of Google Maps, a dusty old atlas Fai digs out of his glove compartment, and “uh, I think I remember it being a left here” from Yamazaki, who has been there before. The result of this, of course, is several wrong turns and a lot of arguing. Even the normally good-natured Syaoran gets a little snappy occasionally.

 

For the first hour or so the music is in a constant state of flux. Kurogane starts it out with some classic rock—in his opinion, great road trip music—but Yamazaki and Fai object. Fai ends up stealing the cord and putting on ABBA, which makes Kurogane so mad that he almost hits the idiot in the head and sends them crashing into the next lane. Syaoran, in an attempt to be a peacemaker, puts on classical music, hoping it will be neutral. Unfortunately, this is not to be. Ryuu-ou hates classical music in general; Fai prefers opera and ballet, Kurogane goes for Wagner and the darker Romantic stuff with lots of clashing and tympani, and Yamazaki doesn’t care what you put on, he’ll have some fake fact about the composer that’ll probably turn you off it. (“Did you know that Beethoven believed he was an alien? Did you know that Chopin had a pet rock? Did you know….” And every time, Syaoran nods gravely and goes “Really? Wow, I didn’t know that” and Kurogane is 99% sure he isn’t just kidding because yeah, Syaoran really  _ is _ that gullible.)

 

They try to compromise again—they alternate, each putting on one song in five. This ends up with probably the weirdest playlist Kurogane has ever heard. AC/DC, then Electric Light Orchestra, then Chopin, then some dubstep thing, then that stupid “Best Day of my Life” song. Nightwish (in an attempt to be annoying, because Kurogane is so done), then Bastille, then…. you get the picture. A lot of things get skipped. Fai puts on that awful “Happy” song and sings along really loudly; the kids in the back giggle, Yamazaki joins in (when he isn’t telling elaborate stories about why Pharrell Williams wears that hat and how it is that he never seems to age) and Kurogane wants to duct tape both their mouths and shove them in the trunk.

 

About three hours in, when they’ve given up entirely on music and have gone on to dumb car games like I Spy and that license plate game and Punch Buggy, Syaoran gets a phone call. He listens intently for a minute or so, barely saying anything, then says “Look, why don’t we just switch?” He listens again. “No, seriously, it’s fine! How about you guys take Yamazaki, I’m sure he wants to hang out with his girlfriend more than us.”

 

Kurogane, in that moment, almost thinks that God is real. That kid has been getting on his nerves this whole time. Now if only maybe Ryuu-ou can leave too and they can finally settle on some stupid music.

 

They rendesvous at a rest stop and Kimihiro, steaming visibly, stomps over to the Monstrosity and gets in without a word, as Yamazaki runs over to sit next to his girlfriend (Chiharu, Kurogane thinks he remembers) in Yuuko’s car without a backward glance.

 

Finally, they manage to come up with a playlist that suits everyone. Fai tones down his peppy music, Kurogane tones down his dark music, and they add in a lot of Beatles, which at least seems to be okay with everyone. Kimihiro calms down after a few minutes and they actually manage to have a fairly normal car conversation about video games and summer movies. Kurogane and Kimihiro bond over hating the beach and not knowing how they got dragged into this, and Ryuu-ou and Fai somehow tone down their enthusiasm a little now that Yamazaki isn’t there.

 

They stop for pizza for dinner; they’re about an hour out now, if Google Maps is to be trusted. They’re laughing now and having a spirited conversation about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which they all admit is ridiculous even though some of them love it. 

 

Before they know it, they’ve arrived at the beach house, which is  _ huge _ . Kurogane has never really thought about how rich the Daidoujis are, but he’s guessing they’re pretty rich, since Tomoyo’s mom owns a toy company. It’s one of those very beach-y beach houses, with shell decorations and sea-themed knicknacks everywhere, but even he has to admit that it’s very nice.

 

Yuuko’s car has gotten there already, maybe ten or fifteen minutes before, so they’ve already assigned themselves rooms. Kurogane finds to his horror that there are five rooms (if you count the loft) and twelve of them. He has probably realized this before in the back of his mind, but never actually took the time to  _ think _ about the fact that he’s going to have to share a room, which he has never done before and isn’t sure if he wants to even try, especially considering who else is here.

 

Yuuko has taken it upon herself to assign rooms. Of course she has. She’s appropriated an entire room to herself and will not hear any arguments against this (it’s the master bedroom,  _ of course _ ). There’s another room with two full beds, like a hotel, two with one full each and a loft with three twins and a sort of back room thingy to change in. There are no air mattresses, cots, or pull-out couches, and there don’t even seem to be enough extra blankets and pillows to sleep on the floor comfortably. This seems  _ highly _ implausible and must be either Yuuko’s or Tomoyo’s doing and meant to serve some nefarious purpose, Kurogane is  _ convinced. _

 

Room assignments make a weird kind of sense, he  _ guesses _ , except for Yuuko’s stealing an entire giant bed to herself (it’s probably a waterbed, too, and he’d bet you anything that her private bathroom has a Jacuzzi and maybe a frickin’ sauna). Chiharu and Yamazaki get a room to themselves, one of the ones with a full bed. The boys (Syaoran, Ryuu-ou, Kimihiro and Doumeki) get the room with two fulls and will presumably have to share the beds, since there isn’t really enough floor space for more than one person to sleep on the floor without squishing probably more than you would in a bed. The girls—Sakura, Tomoyo and Himawari—will sleep in the loft, and he and Fai get the other full room. Which is…. well, it’s better than some of the other room assignments he could have thought of, he has to admit. But if Yuuko wants to be actually  _ fair _ , she should switch rooms with them, because Kurogane sincerely doubts that either he or Fai will be able to fit in the full-sized bed even by themselves, much less together, as she obviously intends.

 

There’s also the problem of bathrooms. Specifically, there is Yuuko’s Jacuzzi and shower, and then there is one other bathroom with a shower and tub and one half bath on the loft level. This is horrendously impractical unless one wants to go outside and use the showers out there, which are really for getting sand off you and not for actually washing and are kinda rickety and dangerous-looking. This is the most horribly planned vacation that Kurogane has ever been on, and he makes this fact very plain, very loudly, many times.

 

Yuuko’s bathroom ends up being designated for the girls and the other one for the boys. She immediately retreats into it and Kurogane hears her start up the bath, which is  _ definitely _ a Jacuzzi. She also seems to have zero qualms about modesty, since she immediately calls out that whoever wants to can come take a shower and/or brush their teeth.

 

He wonders if Tomoyo is going to try to engineer some kind of “accident” where Sakura and Syaoran run into each other while one of them is in a towel, or see each other undressing or something. He resolves to be on his guard—sure, he wants the kids to just get together already, but that isn’t exactly the best way to go about it, in his opinion. He has also noted the sheer number of random doors that aren’t for bedrooms or bathrooms, and the fact that many of the doors look exactly the same, making it easy to wander into someone else’s room or a linen closet instead of where you were actually going. This place, he decides, is like a minefield of cliché situations waiting to happen, and Tomoyo and Yuuko are pulling the trigger. Maybe he’ll keep a tally. He’s sure there will be at least five things that happen in every slice-of-life anime and maybe a few rom-com slapstick bits, too.

 

He runs into his own first cliché incredibly quickly. (Well, second, counting the bed thing. The room has been so stuffed with furniture that there is basically no floor space to sleep on, and he is one thousand percent sure that this is intentional and will be having Words with Tomoyo later.) Fai has left their shared room and Kurogane is pretty sure he’s gone to talk to someone or other for a while, but just in case he locks the door and shutters the window and undresses basically under a towel (a beach towel—the towels here are tiny, another thing that is probably Tomoyo’s doing). He doesn’t hear anyone in the bathroom, but just in case he knocks loudly and, hearing no answer, goes in to take a shower (wrapped in the beach towel because he’s not taking any chances).

 

Fai has not gone to talk to someone. Fai is taking a bath, in that bathroom, right now, and Kurogane is pretty sure that his entire body has just turned bright red. Luckily it’s a bubble bath, so he can’t  _ really _ see anything, but even the idea is embarrassing enough. Fai doesn’t even see him at first—he’s bent forward, humming to himself, with his hair falling into his eyes.

 

“WHAT THE HELL?” he screeches, quickly retreating into the shower, which thankfully has a curtain and isn’t one of those weird frosted glass things. His brain processes what he has just seen and learns the somewhat interesting fact that Fai does have a tattoo—it’s a phoenix, or something like one, and it covers pretty much his entire back.

 

Fai doesn’t even seem weirded out by this at all. In fact, he’s laughing. Kurogane isn’t even sure if he’s noticed him or if he’s just laughing to himself about something.

 

He takes a deep breath and starts again. “I  _ knocked _ ! I did! Pretty loudly, actually! And no one  _ answered! _ ” He’s still yelling a little, but probably not loudly enough for the entire house to hear. Probably.

 

“I’m sorry, I had headphones in!” Fai is still laughing.

 

“In the  _ bath _ ?!”

 

“Well, yeah! I have a waterproof case—”

 

“I don’t care. Just—next time just  _ tell people _ when you’re going to take a bath! Oh my god!” Kurogane’s face still feels hot and his heart is pounding.

 

“I did! You just weren’t listening to me.” Fai’s tone is amused with an edge of playful admonishment. How can he be so  _ calm _ about this? “You were reading something, and you must have just heard ‘I’m going to’ and that’s it!”

 

Oh. Oops. “I heard something about Syaoran—” he mumbles, feeling like an idiot.

 

“Yeah, I said I was going to ask Syaoran and the others if any of them wanted the bath right now.”

 

Okay, so it might possibly be mostly his own fault. But now he’s stuck here until Fai leaves, because he isn’t about to get back out of the shower and risk seeing  _ more _ , but it would be so weird to shower with someone else in the bath right next to him. Also naked. This is  _ so weird _ . 

 

Fai interrupts his mental argument with “Aren’t you going to turn  _ on _ the shower? That is what it’s for, isn’t it?”

 

He tries very hard not to think about the other contexts of “turn on” and mumbles something incoherent, then grudgingly tosses his towel over the top of the shower curtain and starts the shower. Luckily, Fai leaves after a couple more minutes, and he gradually gets a little less tense, although he’s still on edge and nearly throws the soap across the room when someone knocks.

 

“Uhh, I’m in the shower!” he says quickly, then kicks himself. Of course whoever it was knows that, they can hear the damn  _ water  _ running.

 

“Is it okay if I come in and brush my teeth? Fai says you can’t see anything when the shower curtain’s all the way closed.” It’s Syaoran.

 

“Sure,” he says, with a little hesitation.

 

Syaoran doesn’t talk at all for a few minutes, then says quietly, “Sharing a bathroom is kinda hard, huh?”

 

Kurogane makes an affirmative sort of noise and starts to rinse his hair.

 

“I never really had to deal with it until I came here. I mean, I had to share with my dad, but sometimes we had two bathrooms and we never really needed it at the same time. But living with Kimihiro, sometimes it’s kind of a pain… We go to bed at around the same time and stuff. And then there’s my mom and my sisters, which is  _ really _ hard sometimes.”

 

“Wait, you have sisters?” Kurogane has never heard him say this before.

 

“Four. They’re all way older though. They don’t live with us, but they visited for a couple weeks at the beginning of the summer and it was…  _ really _ hectic.” He laughs a little. “I hadn’t seen them since I was really little and I barely even know them.”

 

Kurogane winces, thinking how stressful it would be to have  _ four _ sisters. He can barely handle Tomoyo and she isn’t even a blood relative.

 

“When my parents got divorced, my dad moved back to Hong Kong, but he goes all over for his work as an archaeologist,” Syaoran continues. “I was maybe ten at the time, and I really wanted to be an archaeologist like my dad, so I went with him. My sisters stayed here and so did Kimihiro—none of them wanted to leave their friends.” 

 

“Do you think you made the right choice?” Kurogane asks thoughtfully. He’s been done with the shower for a minute or two now, but he wants to finish this conversation.

 

“I go back and forth.” Syaoran sounds almost sad. “It was a really great experience for me and it did make me realize that I really do want to be an archaeologist, or maybe a museum curator, or a historian or something. I really love old books and dead languages. But sometimes I wonder if it would have been better for me to have stayed here. I basically lost contact with the rest of my family for most of five years—I mean, we Skyped sometimes and stuff, but I didn’t get to share that time with them, you know? And sometimes I wonder if, well, with Sakura—” He trails off.

 

“Did you two grow up together or something?” Kurogane gives up and just turns off the shower. He’s put his clothes in a reachable place on the floor anyway.

 

“Yeah, we were neighbors, and we always used to play together and stuff. I had a huge crush on her, of course.” Kurogane is surprised he can even admit this. “But after I moved—well, apparently when she was eleven she got into some kind of accident. I was never clear on the details, but she’s fine except for some kind of selective memory loss. She remembers parts of her childhood very clearly, but she’s forgotten whole incidents and…. people.” His voice breaks a little.

 

“You,” Kurogane realizes. “She forgot about you.”

 

“Yeah. Sometimes she remembers a little, though. Like that day when Yukito came in, she started to remember some then, but then she got a migraine and forgot it all again.” Syaoran sighs. 

 

“That’s why Touya is so protective of her,” Kurogane says. It’s all starting to make sense now.

 

“Touya’s scared that having me around will hurt her, I think. Apparently, though, the doctors think—” he pauses for a second as Kurogane, now dressed, steps out of the shower. “Well, the doctors think that seeing me might be the best thing for her. They’re divided on it, actually, some of them think it’s a terrible idea.” He shrugs. “Or at least that’s what her dad told me when I talked to him. So…. for now I’m just going to pretend we met that day I came into the coffee shop, and hope that some day she remembers the rest.”

 

He looks so sad that without thinking, Kurogane reaches out and ruffles his hair. Later he will absolutely deny having done this, but with the kid’s dad a million miles away in Hong Kong (or wherever he is now) Kurogane is kind of the closest thing he’s got right now. He would make an awful father, he thinks, although he supposes he could imitate his own father and do a pretty decent job.

 

He finds himself telling Fai all of this a few minutes later, when they’re alone in their room. Man,  _ that _ ’s a weird thing to think about. It feels almost normal somehow, which just makes it even weirder.

 

Fai listens in silence until he gets to the part about being an awful father, which he for some reason finds himself telling all of to Fai, despite having resolved a few minutes earlier that he would never tell anyone. He puts it down to exhaustion, emotional as well as physical.

 

Surprisingly, Fai doesn’t make fun of him for this. Instead, he says quietly, “I saw you, you know.”

 

His face feels hot again. “W-what? You didn’t see anything.” He has omitted the part about the hair ruffle from his story, of course.

 

“You’d be a great father,” Fai tells him seriously. Their eyes are locked and Fai seems to be refusing to look away. It’s all very intense and Kurogane isn’t really sure how to feel about it or what to do with his hands and he abruptly gets up from the bed and goes to stand in front of the closet until he’s a little more stable. There’s an odd feeling in his chest and his heart seems very loud in his ears. What is  _ wrong _ with him?

 

After a minute, he coughs and says “I’ll take the floor, don’t worry about it,” his throat feeling oddly dry.

 

“You won’t  _ fit _ , there’s too much furniture in here! I’ll take it, I’m shorter and thinner.” Kurogane sneaks a glance behind him and sees that Fai is facing away from him, his back slumped a little. He looks somehow smaller.

 

They lie down in silence, Fai taking the comforter and one of the pillows from the bed. It looks horribly uncomfortable and Kurogane lies there quietly feeling guilty until he just gets up, snatches the blanket and pillow away from Fai and shoves him toward the bed. 

 

“You drove us here, dumbass, you’re the one who needs sleep. I’ll be fine.”

 

Fai was right, of course—he really  _ doesn’t  _ fit on the floor. He keeps hitting his head on something every time he moves even an inch and he has to curl into a ridiculous fetal position to even fit at all. He resigns himself to not getting any sleep. He deserves it, probably. He’s not sure why yet, but a reason will probably come to him around three AM.

 

Somehow, though, he does fall asleep, only a few minutes later, apparently. He must have been more tired than he thought. He wakes up feeling a lot more comfortable and with a weight on top of his left side. His left arm is so numb that it feels like it’s fallen off, and at first, before he opens his eyes, he thinks he’s somehow tipped the dresser over on himself or something. Then he realizes that no, somehow Fai has dragged him into the bed and fallen asleep on top of him. 

 

The idiot is sound asleep with his face completely buried in the pillow. He’s obviously tried to give Kurogane as much space as possible, and certainly his  _ face _ is almost hanging off the bed, but he’s somehow angled himself in his sleep so that his arm is flung out across Kurogane (who is a side sleeper, so the arm isn’t actually touching that much of him) and his legs are tangled up in both the blankets and Kurogane’s legs around the ankles. His chest is pinning Kurogane’s arm completely and certainly explains the numbness.

 

Kurogane is torn between being incredibly pissed and actually kind of touched, and also a little awed that Fai had the sheer strength to drag him all the way up from the floor. And a bit surprised that he’s slept so deeply that being moved didn’t wake him up—unless he sleepwalked, which he’s never done before to his knowledge.

 

Somehow, he extricates himself without waking Fai. This is considerably easier than he expects, since he quickly realizes that probably nothing short of a drum corps would wake Fai up right now. Fai does, however, make a sort of mewing noise in protest and grab onto Kurogane’s shirt when he sits up and tries to move the arm. He’s probably just trying to hold onto the warmth, Kurogane thinks slightly frantically, and at last manages to stand up. As he tries again to move Fai’s arm down to the blankets, Fai grabs his hand— _ really _ tightly, he might add. Of course, this is the hand that has been pinned under most of Fai’s weight for six or seven hours, and he almost forgets to be embarrassed because it hurts so much. He wonders if there are bruises too or if it’s just that his circulation is entirely gone. The hand is certainly very red, and getting redder, with little white half-moons where Fai’s nails are digging into it.

 

Just as he’s starting to panic slightly, Fai lets out a soft sigh and drops his hand, arm immediately going to encircle the pillow. He catches himself feeling something almost like fondness. Hell, it’s almost  _ cute _ . Wow, he really must be tired still.

 

He quickly pulls on some clothes and tiptoes out of the room, heart still pounding a little.  _ Just two more nights of this _ , he thinks.  _ Oh GOD, two more nights of this. _

 

Everyone else still seems to be asleep—it's only six thirty, but Kurogane is an early riser by nature and probably couldn’t sleep much longer if he tried. The boys have left their door open and he looks in as he passes by, curious what they’ve done for sleeping arrangements. 

 

He has to stifle an amused snort when he takes it all in. Syaoran and Ryuu-ou are sharing one bed; Syaoran is practically sleeping sideways on the wall in a desperate attempt to give Ryuu-ou some space, and Ryuu-ou is lying on his back, snoring, with one arm behind his head and one flung off the bed, fingertips brushing the floor. One of his legs is hanging off the bed a little and the other is practically on top of Syaoran. Kurogane isn’t even sure how that sleeping position is  _ possible _ .

 

In the other bed, Doumeki is lying on his back, looking perfectly composed, while Kimihiro is basically wrapped around him like a cat. He’s flung off the blankets, so Kurogane can see in detail just how entangled he’s gotten himself. Suddenly having one arm pinned under Fai doesn’t seem so bad. Kimihiro is almost completely on top of Doumeki, one arm under his own pillow and the other under Doumeki’s. He isn’t even using his pillow at all—his face is basically pillowed on Doumeki’s chest, and his legs are even more tangled with Doumeki’s than Fai’s had been with Kurogane’s. Doumeki has one of his hands in Kimihiro’s hair and the other hanging off the bed. Kurogane has no idea if they’re a couple or not, but they’re certainly sleeping like one. As he watches, Doumeki’s hand moves slightly to brush a bit of hair off Kimihiro’s forehead, and Kurogane wonders if he’s awake.

 

He sneaks away, not wanting to be caught staring, and goes to make himself some coffee, then breakfast. As he gets water for coffee, he suddenly realizes what he and Fai probably looked like to an outside observer and almost drops the coffee maker.

 

Before he has a chance to think more about this, face burning, he hears a loud thump, then an incomprehensible exclamation. Then someone swears loudly, there’s another loud bang and then a muffled shriek. Suddenly there’s a loud, very one-sided argument, another thump from the loft,  a scream, and the whole house is awake.

 

If he’s deduced this correctly, the sequence of events was probably something like: Ryuu-ou finally falls off the bed (a matter of time, given his precarious position), which wakes Syaoran, who hits his head on the wall, which wakes Kimihiro, who obviously didn’t go to sleep in this position and immediately berates Doumeki as if it’s his fault. He assumes someone else has fallen off their bed in the loft—

 

“Oh my god, Sakura, are you okay?” he hears Tomoyo say, then “Did you hit your head? Oh god, you didn’t, did you? Here, follow my finger.” “How many fingers am I holding up?” This from Himawari. “Who’s the President?” “What’s your name?” “Oh my god please don’t have a concussion!”

 

Sighing loudly, he goes upstairs, coffee forgotten. Sakura, blinking sleep out of her eyes with tousled hair, assures everyone that she’s totally fine and she’s sorry for making them worry. Luckily, the carpet is thick and she didn't fall near anything sharp or any corners of furniture, so all she’ll have is a few bruises on her backside.

 

“I toss and turn a lot when I sleep, and I guess I’m just not used to having a bed this size,” she explains, and patiently submits to everyone’s frantic tests of her memory, which seems unaffected.

 

One crisis averted, Kurogane goes back downstairs. He is greeted by ruined coffee and Kimihiro having a spirited argument more  _ at _ Doumeki than  _ with _ him. He stays well out of this and goes to check on the other two. Syaoran  _ has _ hit his head, but does not seem to have a concussion and isn’t bleeding at all, thankfully. Kurogane looks over him with a practiced eye and tells him to put some ice on it and it might not bruise, despite Syaoran’s protests that he’s fine, really, and it doesn’t hurt at all. Ryuu-ou has landed hard on his hand, but nothing is broken, although he’s broken the skin in a couple of places and narrowly avoided spraining his wrist.

 

“It’s gonna hurt like hell for a while,” Kurogane tells him. “Go put ice on that right now and I’ll see if I can rig something up, maybe treat it like a sprain—it’s not, but I bet it will feel like one. Got any other bruises?”

 

Ryuu-ou winces. “Uh, my tailbone, I think, and I banged up my elbow pretty bad.”

 

Kurogane looks at it and pronounces it skinned, nothing more. He gets ice and band-aids for everyone, including Sakura, despite her insistence that she’s fine. Wordlessly, he hands a bit of ice to Doumeki, too, whose cheek is bright red where Kimihiro has apparently slapped him, and gives him a sympathetic look.

 

Yamazaki and Chiharu are out in the kitchen too by this point, although Yuuko and Fai still seem to be asleep. The whole house has exploded in chaos—Tomoyo and Syaoran fuss over Sakura, Sakura fusses over Syaoran and Ryuu-ou, Yamazaki cheerfully tells tall tales about the origin of band-aids and the uses of ice, Chiharu alternates between fussing over everyone and half-strangling Yamazaki to shut him up, and Himawari attempts to make peace between Kimihiro and Doumeki. Amidst all this, Kurogane somehow manages to remake his coffee, and retreats to an as yet untouched corner of the living room to drink it in something vaguely resembling peace.

 

Eventually everything calms down somewhat and they manage to start breakfast. This, too, becomes an ordeal—Yuuko is awake by this point and she and Doumeki immediately assume that Kimihiro will be making breakfast for everyone. The poor guy flips out again, of course, but he does seem to be the only one who’s awake and a good enough cook. Himawari offers to help, but judging from the horrified expressions of everyone who knows her well enough, this is a terrible idea. Eventually Sakura takes on the role of kitchen helper and Fai wakes up just in time to split the work with the two of them. He’s dug out aprons from somewhere. They are pink and ruffly and all three of them look completely at home in them.

 

Breakfast is, frankly, incredible and he has no idea how they’ve done it. Unfortunately,  _ after _ breakfast he can no longer avoid the inevitable: they are at the beach, and he’s going to be dragged out onto it whether he likes it or not.

 

Sure, he’s an outdoorsy kinda guy, but camping in the mountains is a very  _ very _ different thing than the beach. The beach has sand that gets absolutely everywhere and burns your feet, and little creepy crabs that you don’t see until it’s too late, and  _ sand burrs _ and kelp, which is just gross, and weird-looking animals that may or may not be poisonous to the touch. All in all, he’ll take the mosquitoes and bears, which at least he isn’t likely to  _ step on _ . Plus, there’s just something so superficial about the beach. You don’t go there to have an adventure and experience the great outdoors, you go there to look hot and get a tan and maybe go swimming or surfing or something. Kurogane is tan enough already and has no interest in showing off his body to anyone, thank you very much.

 

He refuses to even wear a swimsuit, despite multiple protests. He plans to sit on a towel under an umbrella and read a book, so he goes out in his customary black jeans and a black t-shirt, just to be obstinate. (He does, however, wear swim trunks underneath—not because he’s planning to go swimming, but because he has no doubt that someone at some point will probably try to strip him and throw him in the water, and he doesn’t want to show off his boxers to anyone lucky enough to actually manage.)

 

For a while, it’s almost nice. He and Kimihiro, who is also being a conscientious objector today, hang out on a blanket as far as humanly possible from the water and read. Kurogane can’t seem to concentrate, though, and eventually gives up and just people-watches (read: watches his idiot friends embarrass themselves).

 

He witnesses Syaoran’s reaction to Sakura in a bikini, which is pretty much what you’d expect. The swimsuit really isn’t that revealing—the top has a wide ribbon for a halter and a wide strap, and the bottom is high-waisted and has a tiny ruffly skirt on it which serves absolutely no purpose that Kurogane can see. Nonetheless, Syaoran looks like he’s instantly contracted the worst sunburn known to man and nearly trips over tiny shells about four times. His swim trunks are Bermuda shorts with a Hawaiian print and  _ pockets _ and he looks like an absolute dweeb. Kurogane despairs of the kid.

 

Yuuko, on the other hand, is obviously using the beach for its intended purpose (although he has no idea how she’s going to tan with all that hair).  _ She _ ’s got a tiny string bikini which she’s promptly unhooked in back and seems to be perfectly content lying on her stomach sipping margaritas and occasionally flirting with a passing guy or girl. Kimihiro rolls his eyes and makes a “tch” noise at her more than once. Of course, she still treats him like her personal errand boy, despite his protests that he’s not on the clock and she’d better be  _ paying _ him for this, this is  _ vacation _ , dammit! Kurogane considers doing something to help when his companion stomps off to fetch his boss her third margarita and ends up getting forced to rub suntan lotion into her back, but thinks better of it. Interfering with Yuuko is not the way to a relaxing vacation, which he is determined to have at least twenty minutes of, despite the way it’s been looking so far. 

 

At the edge of the water, the girls and Yamazaki shriek and giggle when a particularly big wave comes up. Someone has brought one of those giant inflatable beach balls and the kids strike up a game, which for the life of him Kurogane cannot work out the rules of. 

 

He has no idea where Fai has gone to and hopes he hasn’t drowned or something. For about five minutes, he tells himself that Fai is a big boy and can probably handle a beach for an hour by himself. Then he gives up and goes to look for the idiot. Kimihiro’s gone anyway. Kurogane isn’t sure where until he almost trips over Doumeki’s leg and sees that Kimihiro has been roped into applying suntan lotion to yet another person. He doesn’t look up and Kurogane is pretty sure that Doumeki is half asleep, so he just keeps going. He hears another argument starting up as he walks away (“what, you expect me to just wait on you hand and foot? No I will  _ not _ get you a drink!”).

 

Fai, it turns out, has gone exploring. He really isn’t dressed for exploring, Kurogane thinks first, and then his brain catches up with him and he just tries not to stare. 

 

It could be a lot worse—it could be a  _ Speedo _ . Thankfully, it’s just fairly normal-looking swim trunks, if a little short, and for some reason Fai is toting around scuba gear, despite there not really being anywhere to scuba nearby that has anything more interesting than kelp. He’s obviously been in swimming, because his hair and his swim trunks are dripping and the rest of him is covered in little beads of water, which does interesting things to the tattoo. The weight of the water is dragging the swim trunks just a little too low on his hips and the whole thing looks very precarious. Aaaand he is definitely staring now and trying not to think about how—

 

“You look hot, Kuro-chan!”

 

\--hot—wait, what?

 

His brain kind of just stops for a minute. He may be making an incoherent sort of noise and he’s pretty sure he looks like a complete idiot. Fai cannot  _ possibly _ have just said that and he cannot  _ possibly  _ have just thought that and this is all some kind of weird dream. He hopes.

 

Fai is giving him a concerned look. His eyes are incredibly blue, almost the same color as the sky, and that is really not the sort of thing he should be thinking right now.

 

“Kuro-puppy, you’re not dying of heatstroke or something, are you? You look kind of out of it.” Fai puts a cool hand on his forehead and despite the weird jolt he gets from this, he feels incredibly relieved. Hot. Hot as in “you’re wearing all black and it’s eighty-something degrees out.” What else could he have meant?

 

“You really should get out of those clothes,” Fai continues innocently, and Kurogane gulps and thinks that his face right now is probably not helping any of Fai’s concerns about him getting too much sun. So he responds the only way he knows how.

 

“I’m doing just  _ fine _ , thank you very much! What the hell were  _ you _ doing, wandering around by yourself like that without telling anyone where you went? You could have gotten dragged under by the undertow and no one would have known! I was w—” he swallows the word “worried” and instead goes for “that is, don’t expect me to lead a goddamn search party for you, idiot! I bet you aren’t even wearing  _ sunscreen _ , Mr. I’m So Worried About Sunstroke.”

 

“Ooh, Kuro-sama is scary when he gets angry like that~” Fai hops back a foot or so to avoid the onslaught.

 

“You aren’t wearing sunscreen, are you.” It isn’t even a question anymore.

 

“Oh, I didn’t need it! I was in the water or in caves the whole time. Did you know there are little sea caves over this way? I found a starfish, look!” Fai moves to drag him over towards the alleged sea caves, but Kurogane is having none of it.

 

“I am not gonna be responsible for your goddamn sunburn. Go put sunscreen on right now. I don’t care if you only get five minutes of sun, you’re still gonna burn in seconds with this pasty white skin of yours.” Kurogane flicks him on the shoulder to punctuate his point.

 

Approximately five minutes later, he knows  _ exactly _ how Kimihiro feels. Fai has inexpertly applied sunscreen to most of his exposed skin, at least. Well, Kurogane  _ thinks _ he has. He stopped watching after the first few seconds because the sight was equal parts cringe-worthy ( _ you missed a huge spot right there—no, there—oh, never mind. You do know you have to rub it in, right? _ ) and… well, a bit too suggestive to handle after everything else he’s been through today. But of course, he  _ cannot  _ manage to reach his back properly, despite those ridiculously long arms.

 

“Would you, Kuro-woofy? Please~?” Fai pouts exaggeratedly at him and offers the tube of sunscreen, and Kurogane regrets all of his life decisions up to this point and almost just tells him to go get Kimihiro to do it. He does not, however, have a death wish, and he takes the stupid sunscreen, barely resisting the urge to throw it into the sea.

 

Fai moves to lie down, but luckily for Kurogane, there aren’t any towels nearby and he tells Fai sternly that he will stay standing unless he wants to have little bits of sand stuck to him for the rest of the day. This mitigates the weirdness a little, but not much.

 

“Have you ever even  _ been _ to the beach before? Have you even been  _ outside _ ?” Kurogane asks, exerting a considerable effort to keep his voice steady as he hurriedly puts a dollop of sunscreen between Fai’s shoulder blades, trying to touch him as little as possible.

 

Fai shivers exaggeratedly and complains, “That stuff is  _ freezing! _ ”

 

“That’s only because you’re hot. Answer the question.” Kurogane realizes what he has said belatedly and almost puts his head in his hands, but remembers that they’re covered with sunscreen just in time.

 

He hopes Fai won’t notice, but unfortunately the dumbass has  _ no _ problem identifying innuendoes when he isn’t the one saying them.

 

“Ooh, are you  _ flirting  _ with me, Kuro-sama?” He can’t see Fai’s face, but he’s probably smirking.

 

“No!” Kurogane yells, slightly unconvincingly. “Do you want me to do this or not?” If he makes a “that’s what she said” joke, Kurogane decides, he will just give up and chuck the tube of sunscreen at the idiot’s head.

 

“Oh, by all means, continue.” He’s definitely smirking.

 

Fighting the urge to strangle him, Kurogane does the quickest job of sunscreen application of his life, treating Fai’s skin like it’s a hot stove. This is about half to get Fai off his case and half because he has a worrying urge to trace that tattoo. Also, Fai  _ will _ keep making exaggerated, vaguely sexual noises.

 

“Okay, done,” he says hurriedly. “Go look in a mirror and fix the rest of it, you look ridiculous.”

 

Fai turns around with a perfectly innocent smile on his face and says “Want me to do you?” in a tone that suggests he knows exactly what he’s saying. This time Kurogane  _ does _ chuck the tube of sunscreen at his head with a growl. It misses wildly as Fai dodges expertly and runs away, giggling. 

 

Kurogane chases him, yelling “Get back here, you punk!” A few heads turn, but everyone who knows them just shakes their heads and goes back to whatever they’re doing.

 

When Fai finally stops running, they’ve come to the sea caves he’s been talking about. He points out a starfish with childlike excitement and Kurogane realizes that his earlier question was true—Fai  _ hasn’t _ ever been to the beach before. Suddenly he feels guilty. He’s probably ruining Fai’s dream beach vacation that he’s looked forward to since he was a kid.

 

“H-hey,” he says awkwardly. “Uh, this beach has a boardwalk, you know—you, uh, you wanna go there later? They’ve got rides and stuff. If, if you’re into that.”  _ God _ , he is  _ such _ an idiot.

 

Fai doesn’t seem to think so, though. He looks up from the tide pool he’s inspecting with a brilliant smile on his face and says “I’d love to!” and Kurogane feels strange, almost like he’s falling.

 

“Let’s go right now,” Fai says, still smiling. He looks more genuinely happy than Kurogane has ever seen him.

 

Vaguely peppy-sounding music is playing when they step onto the boardwalk half an hour or so later, and it takes him a second to recognize it as “Ever Fallen In Love.” He feels a little as if he’s just stepped into a movie, with the montage-y music and the the general look of the place, which seems almost too perfect. There are people running and laughing everywhere and screams echo from the rides above them, but thankfully it’s not as horribly crowded as he expected it to be.

 

They buy a bunch of tickets at the window and Fai stares seriously at the list of rides, his scarf somehow managing to float straight out across his shoulder picturesquely. He’s changed into jeans and a light blue button-down and for some reason added a silvery scarf. It does look appropriately dramatic in the light wind, but it probably won’t fare very well on a roller coaster or even the Ferris wheel. Kurogane, who is inclined to be paranoid about these things, has taken out all of his earrings and left them in his room at the house, even though there’s probably no way they could fall out. He didn’t want them this morning anyway—it’s too sunny for metal anything, and anyway he doesn’t know what the salt water will do to them.

 

“Bumper cars,” says Fai. “And the Ferris wheel, and the swings, and the carousel, and the Wave Rider but not the other roller coaster, that one looks too scary.”

 

“We’re gonna need more tickets,” Kurogane says with a sigh, and then Fai has grabbed his hand and is dragging him off in the direction of—um, something. It turns out to be one of those ring toss stalls where you can win a plushie, and Fai tells him that he  _ needs _ that stuffed cat.

 

Automatically, Kurogane plunks down a few tickets and starts trying to win the stupid thing. The game is way harder than it looks and he fails miserably. Fai laughs at him in the background, but he ignores it. He’s about to try again, annoyed that he can’t seem to win, when Fai, laughing still, physically shoves him out of the way.

 

“I didn’t say I wanted  _ you  _ to win it for me, silly,” he says, and proceeds to get a perfect score and win the stuffed cat on his first try. Kurogane really hates him. A lot. Especially since that thing is gonna take up space in their room now, and later in the car. Also, he reminds Fai, there’s no one else to hold it when they go on rides.

 

Luckily, just at that moment he remembers to check his phone and sees that Tomoyo has texted to ask where he is. Sure enough, when he tells her, she instantly tells him what a great idea that is and says she’ll be right over with, well, literally everyone and two video cameras. Kurogane sighs. It was nice while it lasted.

 

Fai is all for getting food while they wait for the others, but Kurogane warns him that rides come first, food later. He has no idea how resilient Fai’s stomach is, but for someone who obviously has never been to an amusement park before, more caution is always better.

 

They end up riding the Ferris wheel, since there’s no real danger for that damn stuffed cat and it’s a good starter ride. Fai, it turns out, absolutely loves heights and snaps a bunch of pictures of the view from the top, along with about a thousand selfies, many featuring an unwilling Kurogane. A couple of times he grabs Kurogane’s hand to point out a seagull or an interesting cloud. He doesn’t seem to realize he’s doing it.

 

Kurogane is all for holding the stuffed cat while Fai goes on the carousel by himself, but Fai absolutely  _ insists _ that he ride, too. Kurogane hates carousels, but he’ll submit to riding it if it’ll make Fai happy. There’s no  _ point _ to them, he mutters to himself as he stands in line. They aren’t thrilling or exciting in any way. It’s just a bunch of plastic horses going around in a circle while obnoxious, tinny music plays. You aren’t high up, or even going that fast, and it certainly isn’t  _ scary _ .

 

They stick the cat in one of those carriage things, which serve even less purpose than the carousel itself and are obviously there for people who don’t want to have  _ any _ fun at  _ all,  _ according to Fai _. _ Kurogane can’t say he disagrees, although in his opinion that’s, like, the whole  _ thing _ . Of course, Fai takes a bunch of pictures of the cat “riding” the carousel and loudly bemoans the fact that there’s no one to take pictures of the two of them. Kurogane, on the other hand, is very very glad of this fact. This is blackmail material if he ever saw it. He doesn’t even bother to hold on and glares at the stupid gold pole in front of him the whole way, but Fai at least seems to have a great time.

 

They go into the mirror maze next, another thing Kurogane thinks is ridiculous but is a quintessential part of a carnival experience, probably. Fai is kind of disappointed by the funhouse mirrors, which are kind of blurry and the effects aren’t really that cool. Kurogane is already way past disappointed and is just kind of done.

 

The first of their friends start to show up when they emerge from the mirror maze. Tomoyo exclaims over the cat, which she pronounces “the cutest thing  _ ever _ ” and immediately asks if Kurogane won it. He glares at the ground as Fai cheerfully tells her that no, “Kuro-rin” was awful at the game, a fact which he’d really rather Tomoyo not know. Even Syaoran thinks the cat is cute and “pets” it. Kurogane thinks he’s turning into the grumpy, overheated father of a bunch of seven-year-olds.

 

“We’re gonna get the scary rides over with before lunch,” Kurogane announces. “Anyone want to join?”

 

“Ooh, me,” Tomoyo says immediately. “Wanna be my seat partner, Sakura?”

 

“Okay!” Sakura says, eyes shining. Kurogane would have thought she’d be more the carousel type, but she seems excited for the thrill rides.

 

In the end, everyone decides to go on at least the Wave Rider, the most popular (and most traditional) roller coaster. Kurogane plans to go on everything, because why the hell not. There’s another coaster where the car spins around too, a haunted house ride, one of those spinning swing things, a drop and one of those deals where the car goes up and down a wavy shape a bunch of times.

 

Everyone stands in line for the roller coaster in pairs. They all seem to have paired off fairly quickly, although he hears them making plans to switch it up for other rides. People seem to be basically paired according to their bed assignments right now, except Himawari and Yuuko, who are together. Sakura and Syaoran plan to ride the haunted house together, Yuuko claims Kimihiro for the swings, and Syaoran wants to ride the Giant Drop with his brother. Hesitantly, Kurogane asks Syaoran if he wants to try the spinning coaster together, and he agrees, grinning.

 

“No one else seems to want to go on that one,” he says, although Yuuko immediately interrupts and says she does. Unfortunately, Yuuko is also the only other taker for the Sine Curve—even the bravest aren’t willing to risk it.

 

The roller coaster isn’t the best he’s ever been on, but it isn’t the worst, either. The seats are way too big and not padded at all, so they get thrown around a lot and he’s pretty sure they’re all going to have bruises for days, especially the smallest ones. He has no idea how little kids could ever ride this thing. There are a lot of short, jarring drops and quick turns, but they only go upside down once and there’s only one big drop (the leadup to those is always the worst). Their car is entirely filled with members of their group, many of whom don’t scream much if at all, which is nice. Yuuko mostly shrieks with laughter. She’s one of those hands-up types. The only one who truly  _ screams _ , actually, is Kimihiro (who sounds a bit like he’s being murdered). Most of the rest are only “oh my god whoa” types. Ryuu-ou swears effusively and so does Kurogane, when he makes any noise at all. Fai shrieks a couple of times but eventually gets confident enough to put his hands up toward the end. They all have to admit, though, the beginning is pretty scary—it starts off in the dark, which none of them are expecting except Tomoyo and the other three who’ve been here before, and it swings around a  _ lot _ .

 

They all stagger off and a couple of people burst into relieved laughter. Everyone complains about the ridiculous seats and points out where they’ll probably bruise later.

 

After that, people kind of split off. Fai only really wants to try the swings for now, so he, Kurogane, Yuuko, and Kimihiro head off that way. Sakura, Syaoran, Chiharu, Yamazaki, Ryuu-ou and Tomoyo go to the haunted house, which a few of the others plan to ride later, and Himawari and Doumeki go to wander the boardwalk a little and play some of the games. Himawari pronounces that she wants Doumeki to win her a plushie like Fai got himself. (Yuuko has brought the minivan to the boardwalk’s parking lot, so there’s somewhere to stash these now.)

 

After the swings, he and Fai go on the bumper cars with Ryuu-ou (who gets insanely competitive) and Sakura. He and Yuuko meet up briefly and decide they’ll do the Sine Curve last and meet everyone else for lunch. They decide to do the spinning coaster second-to-last, joined by Sakura, which is quickly ceasing to surprise Kurogane. She even says she might try the Sine Curve if Kurogane and Yuuko say it’s okay and one of them will go again with her.

 

“I went here once when I was thirteen, but I’ve only ridden the more kiddie rides—Touya and my dad wouldn’t let me go on anything scarier,” she explains. “Chiharu and Yamazaki and a couple of our other friends and I came up here for a couple of days in the summer, with some of our parents. If they were here they probably wouldn’t be letting me do all this, but what they don’t know can’t hurt them, right?” She smiles innocently with just a hint of a smirk.

 

Kurogane heads to the Giant Drop with Syaoran, Kimihiro, Doumeki, Yuuko and Sakura, while the rest do the carousel or the Ferris wheel or play more games (Fai promises to win Tomoyo something). Yuuko and Sakura, who ride together, get off grinning, both say “that was  _ nothing! _ ” and high-five. Kurogane and Doumeki nod, shrug, and high-five too. Kimihiro, on the other hand, nearly collapses and Syaoran looks a little green. Doumeki and Kurogane hold them up while Sakura and Yuuko feel their foreheads worriedly (although Yuuko can’t be  _ that _ worried as she promptly suggests they get some Dippin’ Dots, which Kurogane absolutely vetoes).

 

Kimihiro absolutely refuses to go on the haunted house ride and Syaoran and Sakura have already been, so Kurogane goes with Doumeki and Yuuko. It ends up being a three-person ride anyway, so it works out.

 

All that’s left is the spinning coaster and the Sine Curve. Everyone else is heading toward lunch, but some of them say they’ll watch their friends (“so I’ll know exactly how you died,” says an optimistic Kimihiro).

 

The spinning coaster is really scary, even for Kurogane, and he regrets going on it at a couple of particularly precarious turns where he feels like he’s about to be flung to his death. Syaoran is definitely done after this and collapses onto Kurogane, still dizzy. Sakura and Yuuko seem fine, if a little unsteady—Kurogane is pretty sure these two could handle just about anything.

 

The Sine Curve is a three-seater, and Sakura, bright-eyed, agrees to go with them, pronouncing that the spinning coaster wasn't that bad so this can’t be that bad either, right? Kurogane stares up at it in line and thinks it most definitely  _ can _ be that bad, wondering why he wanted to do this in the first place.

 

All three of them topple over onto a bench when it’s over and don’t move for two or three minutes.

 

“It was that bad,” Sakura says, putting a hand to her head. “It was so bad.”

 

“ _ So _ bad,” Kurogane agrees, wincing. Even Yuuko, who is unaffected by everything else, seems content to just sit for a minute or so until the pavement stops moving.

 

They stand up after a while, all wincing a little, and Kurogane and Sakura both pronounce, “I am never doing that again.” 

 

Yuuko, meanwhile, shouts out “Let’s go again!” and her face falls when she realizes that no one else is game. They both stare at her in horror.

 

The others have already gotten hot dogs and hamburgers for lunch, and after making sure they’re all recovered, Kurogane, Sakura and Yuuko join them. There’s a more crowded public beach down below the boardwalk (the beach outside the Daidoujis’ beach house is shared between the five or so families that have houses there and so is a lot more private). They head down there, towels and umbrellas in tow, to just hang out in the shade of the boardwalk for an hour or so. Tomoyo takes the opportunity to get some crowd footage for the movie, which she apparently has been working on when she’s not on a ride (she’s been taking audio samples of the screams from the roller coaster and crowd noises for some nefarious purpose). She also gets a few closeups of Sakura and Syaoran, despite their protests that they aren’t in costume and makeup.

 

“I want this segment to look like a home movie!” she explains. “So I’m just filming it like one!” She’s even shaking the camera, talking from behind it, and artfully losing focus at random points. She actually drops the camera on the sand at one point, which she insists was intentional.

 

When everyone has gotten some of their energy back, Yuuko suggests a game of beach volleyball, pointing out the rows of nets to their right. Although some people don’t want to play, she and Tomoyo insist that everyone play for one game and then some people can watch (“and film!”) .

 

There’s a bit of an argument over teams, which no one can seem to figure out. There are five girls to seven guys, so girls vs. boys wouldn’t be quite fair, but no one wants to go to the trouble of dividing it up another way. Fai settles the argument by going over to the girls’ team with no apparent qualms.

 

Almost everyone is back in their swimsuits by now, or at least partway. Yuuko’s just in her bikini; Sakura is wearing a long shirt as a cover-up, Tomoyo has a sheer minidress thing over her one-piece, Himawari leaves the t-shirt she’s pulled on over her own one-piece but kicks off the jean shorts, and Chiharu just wears a light hoodie with the sleeves rolled up over her bikini. A couple of the guys have taken their shirts off already, and Fai and Ryuu-ou have casually stripped back down to just their swim trunks, not seeming to care for modesty. Fai does, however, leave his button-down on but unbuttoned, apparently finally starting to worry at least a little about sunburn. He ties his scarf around his head in a little bow as a marker that he’s on the “girls’” team, all of whom do have some kind of bow on. Sakura and Tomoyo have halters, Himawari’s tied her pigtails with bows, Chiharu has a bow on her headband and Yuuko’s bikini has tiny bows on the edges. They start to refer to the teams as team with bows/team without after “girls plus Fai” starts to get annoying.

 

The rules are probably nothing like actual beach volleyball, not that any of them have any idea what actual beach volleyball is like anyway. It most closely resembles the volleyball that Kurogane remembers from his middle and high school gym classes, and no one seems to care much about rules. 

 

Yuuko and Ryuu-ou get pretty competitive, though, and both are pretty good. Syaoran is awful and so is Kimihiro. It must run in the family—something about hand-eye coordination, and Kimihiro always flails and misses the ball wildly. Both are especially bad on their right side and Doumeki ends up getting most of the balls that go by on Kimihiro’s right. Kurogane is generally athletic but not particularly good at volleyball specifically, and Yamazaki keeps getting distracted. Also, he never seems to open his damn eyes all the way, so he doesn’t even see the ball coming. 

 

The “bows” team is a lot better than they are in terms of cohesiveness, and practice, probably, since most of them are high school sophomores who’ve had to do this every year since third or fourth grade. Himawari is enthusiastic but misses a lot, but the other three high school girls are quite good and make a very good team. At first Fai seems to be their weak link, but it turns out that amid all that flailing and “Oops~! I missed again” is an incredibly sharp strategic mind and a lot of misdirection. He counts on being underestimated and then sends a perfectly calculated shot right where no one expects it. In short, he’s ruthless and Kurogane never wants to play dodgeball with him.

 

The team with bows also use eye candy to their advantage, and annoyingly enough, it works really well. Even Kurogane, who isn’t attracted to girls and certainly isn’t attracted to Yuuko, gets distracted by the way her bikini top just barely stays on, mostly out of a sort of masochistic horror. Yamazaki constantly forgets to get the ball because Chiharu “just looks so cute” and Syaoran and Kimihiro seem to feel the same way about Sakura and Himawari. Tomoyo swishes her hair dramatically a lot and winks a couple of times, but doesn’t try all that hard, and Fai strategically flexes his muscles and adjusts his shirt to show a tantalizingly small amount of skin. Sadly, this, plus a few calculated smirks and water bottle usage, works on Kurogane all too well, mostly because he tries  _ not _ to look. At least he isn’t the only one—he catches Kimihiro staring a couple of times, too.

 

Predictably, the bows win by a landslide, and the others demand a rematch. They have a brief conference and decide to turn the other team’s weapons against them, to varying degrees of success.

 

“Just act sexy,” Ryuu-ou hisses. Syaoran and Kimihiro blush furiously, Kurogane rolls his eyes and Yamazaki puts his shirt back on so he can take it off “sexily.” Doumeki just shrugs and unbuttons his top button.

 

“Okay, but this plan is contingent on them being attracted to us,” Kurogane points out. “Sure, it’ll work with Yamazaki and Chiharu, probably, but what about everyone else? With them it wasn’t all ‘sexy,’ most of it was just ‘cute,’ and we can’t really do ‘cute.’” He puts little air quotes around the word.

 

“They’ll at least giggle at us trying to act sexy, probably, and that’s something,” Syaoran reasons, blushing a little as he says “sexy.”

 

Kurogane runs through it in his head. They’ve at least got Chiharu and Sakura covered, although he’s not about to mention the part about Sakura. Himawari will probably think her friends are so ridiculous that she’ll be at least somewhat distracted. Yuuko will wolf-whistle at everyone, giggle at her employee, probably catcall Doumeki and maybe Kurogane. Ryuu-ou might count for something if any of the girls happen to think he’s cute. But Fai and Tomoyo…

 

“Watch out for Fai and Tomoyo,” he says out loud. “I don’t think either of them is gonna be fooled, and they’re the best strategists.”

 

They try not to make it look  _ too _ intentional. Some of them have a lot more success with this than others. Doumeki, for instance, makes it look effortless. He slowly unbuttons his shirt in between serves, stretches, leaves the shirt all the way unbuttoned for a little while, and then takes it off and stretches again, showing off his long-built-up muscles from archery. No one even notices what he’s doing, but it works—Yuuko whistles and asks him where he was hiding  _ that _ , and even Himawari’s eyes widen and she stares openly. Unfortunately, it also backfires horribly—Kimihiro blushes furiously and gets even more uncoordinated than he already was, and Doumeki is too busy looking cool to watch his back.  _ He _ doesn’t even try the “sexy” thing, although he unbuttons a cursory two buttons.

 

Ryuu-ou flexes a lot and grins confidently, which doesn’t really work on anyone. Chiharu good-naturedly catcalls Yamazaki when he slowly takes his shirt off, but still lands a serve right in an open spot when his eyes are fixed on her, confident that his ploy has worked. Syaoran, on the other hand, is very effective, despite being incredibly awkward about the whole thing. Blushing furiously, he pulls his shirt off and stretches a little, but it’s enough—Sakura’s whole face goes red and she fumbles her next serve.

 

They’re doing pretty well, but they haven’t incapacitated enough of the girls to make much of a difference, and Fai is still on his game. Kurogane has completely given up on the distraction thing and has, in fact, forgotten about it, but he’s getting really overheated in his black t-shirt and takes it off without much of a thought, bending over to put it down on the ground near his water bottle. When he stands up again, the ball flies past his feet and lands out of bounds. He glances at it, shrugs, stretches his aching muscles, and serves, not really paying attention to the other side any more. He’s mostly just hot and wishing this game would end already.

 

They win pretty quickly after that, surprisingly enough, although Kimihiro’s glasses get knocked off his face once by a serve that goes wide. The other team’s strategy seems to have failed somehow. Maybe everyone’s just so hot and tired that they lose control of their muscles a little, although it is a little weird that the other side’s serve goes really wide to the right of the net right when Kurogane steps out for a second to get a drink. Tomoyo has also kind of stopped playing for some reason and seems to be filming instead, although they’re short a player anyway since Kimihiro has given up in disgust.

 

By now it’s almost four, and they collect their stuff and pile back onto the boardwalk for an afternoon snack and some cold drinks. Fai wants to try every single ridiculous sugary food, so Kurogane quietly makes sure that everyone gets something different and tells him he may have one  _ small _ bite of each. He tries cotton candy, churros, Cracker Jack, those awful greasy nachos, a bit of deep-fried Oreo, Dippin’ Dots, fried dough and funnel cake and pronounces all of them incredible. Kurogane rolls his eyes, sips his lemonade and gets himself a grape Popsicle, which he eats unselfconsciously. He isn’t really hungry, just hot.

 

They walk down to the pier and look at the boats. A few people decide to take a surfing lesson, Fai and Sakura included, and Kurogane and Syaoran try parasailing. Suddenly the sun is setting and they’ve spent the entire day at the beach without realizing it. For once, Kurogane realizes, it’s almost been fun.

 

They go back to the boardwalk one last time before heading to a nearby pizza place for dinner. Tomoyo has decided that she  _ needs _ to film some scene on the Ferris wheel at night and gets tickets for herself, Sakura and Syaoran. The boardwalk is barely populated at this hour and the rides will close soon, and Kurogane thinks  _ why the hell not _ again and asks Fai if he wants to ride it again, too. Kimihiro and Doumeki get tickets, too, and the rest of them go on ahead to the pizza place and get a table.

 

“Stuck in the Middle with You” is playing as they get in line and it promptly gets stuck in Kurogane’s head. It seems appropriate somehow. They all get on in separate cars, Tomoyo going with Sakura and Syaoran to film them. She’s toting a giant makeup case, portable spotlights and mics—apparently this part doesn’t get the home-movie treatment.

 

It’s quiet for a little while as he and Fai watch the view. It’s a four-person car, but they’re the only ones in it, and they’re sitting next to each other this time instead of across from each other like before. They can hear Sakura and Syaoran protesting something in the car below them.

 

“So, uh, how was surfing?” Kurogane asks, putting a hand behind his head self-consciously.

 

“Really cool! I’m not too bad at it, and Sakura was pretty good too.” Kurogane can’t see his face clearly in the dim light from the outside of the wheel. “How was parasailing?”

 

“Really cool,” Kurogane parrots, then winces a little. Can’t he come up with anything better than that?

 

They get to the top, and Fai snaps a few pictures. As they go down one, the car below comes into view, and if Kurogane squints he can just make out their other friends—is Kimihiro leaning on Doumeki’s shoulder?

 

They go down and around again—the wheel always does two full rotations. Fai slides left a little and angles himself so he can face Kurogane, and after a second, Kurogane does the same in the opposite direction. Their knees touch and he almost backs off, but there’s not really anywhere to go.

 

“I had a really great time today,” Fai says quietly. His face is unreadable in the dark, but he sounds happy. “Thank you.”

 

“Uh, you’re welcome.” Kurogane stumbles over the words.

 

Their car reaches the top with a jolt. Fai falls a little, but catches himself with a hand on Kurogane’s thigh. Their faces are uncomfortably close and for a second Kurogane wonders if Fai is going to kiss him. His eyes close almost automatically, but Tomoyo’s yell of “Cut!” from below breaks the spell and they both jerk back, Fai quickly moving his hand. Kurogane’s heart pounds so loudly he wonders if Fai can hear it. He feels like an idiot for the millionth time. What is he even thinking? Of course Fai wasn’t about to kiss him. Why should he want to do that? 

 

After what seems like an eternity, the wheel stops and they rejoin their friends on the platform. Sakura and Syaoran look about as awkward as he feels and are refusing to look at or touch each other, and he wonders what the hell Tomoyo has done. Kimihiro and Doumeki, on the other hand, are leaning in to each other, bumping shoulders, and their hands brush a few times. They’ve obviously had more luck than anyone else tonight.

 

He is spared the awkwardness of sharing a bed with Fai that night—he seems to have gotten it into his head that he should sleep outside in a hammock, since it’s warm enough and there aren’t too many bugs at this time of year. He claims that someone brought it up and made him think of it and it’s something he’s always wanted to try, but Kurogane is pretty sure he’s just avoiding him, or maybe just trying to avoid giving him the wrong idea.

 

Syaoran knocks timidly as Kurogane is sitting up in bed with his battered copy of  _ Fellowship of the Ring _ , figuring he probably won’t sleep anyway so he might as well do something comfortingly familiar to take his mind off of things.

 

“Come in,” he calls, putting down the book and quickly hiding the reading glasses he’s embarrassed to say he needs behind the tissue box.

 

Syaoran stands in the doorway looking conflicted for a minute, then bursts out with, “If you kiss someone for a movie does it count?”

 

_ Oh dear _ , Kurogane thinks, and motions for him to come and sit on the bed. The door closes with a click.

 

“I’m guessing this is what happened on the Ferris wheel?” he asks, already knowing the answer.

 

Syaoran nods mutely.

 

“Want to tell me what exactly did happen?”

 

“Uhh, Tomoyo said there was this scene—and she gave us lines—but then when we got to the top she told us the stage direction was, uh, to kiss. And she told us it didn’t mean anything and we could even do a stage kiss and she showed us how to do it with your thumbs and stuff but then she said that take wasn’t good enough and we had to try it for real when we got to the top again—”

 

“Breathe, kid,” Kurogane interjects, and Syaoran takes a gasping breath.

 

“Sorry—um—s-she even kissed Sakura to show us what she wanted, it was really just quick, it was supposed to be awkward she said—”

 

“So did you kiss her?”

 

“Um, yeah…”

 

“And what’s the big dilemma here exactly?” He’s pretty sure he already knows, but he wants to hear it from Syaoran.

 

“Well I mean—on the one hand, we’re friends, and that makes it awkward—”

 

“Did Sakura seem awkward with Tomoyo at dinner?”

 

“Well, um, no…” Syaoran tousles his hair nervously.

 

“So the three of you are friends and you all know it was just acting and it doesn’t mean anything. That’s not the problem, though, is it.” It isn’t a question.

 

“The problem is…” Syaoran sighs. “The problem is I kind of  _ want  _ it to count.”

 

Tomoyo Daidouji knows  _ exactly _ what she is doing and she’s playing them all like violins. He has to applaud her cleverness even if he does sometimes question her morals.

 

“But Sakura got really embarrassed, right?”

 

Syaoran nods. “I mean, I did too, I guess. It was so… well, weird. I don’t know if I can face her tomorrow.”

 

“Believe it or not, I have been there before,” says Kurogane ruefully. Hell, he’s there right now, kind of. “Probably the best approach is to play it like nothing happened and see if she wants to talk about it. And if you two do get together, don’t count that as your first kiss unless you want it to be.”

 

Syaoran nods, looking a little more confident if still conflicted.

 

“Seriously, it’s only awkward if you make it awkward.” He should really follow his own damn advice. “Tomoyo didn’t make it awkward, so their relationship is fine. If you play it off as no big deal, it’ll get a lot easier for both of you, and then maybe you can confess later that you kind of wished that was a real kiss and see what happens.”

 

They hear laughter from outside and turn to the window. Fai and Sakura are attempting to hang a hammock in a promising-looking tree, but it has collapsed on top of them and they’re lying there tangled in mesh, giggling hopelessly. Unconsciously, he and Syaoran both sigh.

 

“Idiots,” he mutters under his breath, and Syaoran laughs a little.

 

“You really do care about people, as much as you claim to be indifferent,” he says.

 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kurogane says half-heartedly, putting him into a headlock and ruffling his already hopeless hair.

 

After Syaoran leaves, he stares at  _ Fellowship _ , rereading one sentence over and over without really seeing it and trying not to think about however the hell it is he feels about Fai. He looks out the window again and sees Fai and Sakura catching fireflies and making lanterns out of mason jars. They both look happy, or at least contented, and neither seems to be worrying about much at all.

 

There’s another knock at the door. This time it’s Tomoyo, and as much as Kurogane has been wanting to confront her about, well, a lot of things that have happened since they got there, it all flies out of his head as soon as he sees her.

 

“I heard you couldn’t sleep, so I brought you some warm milk,” she says, smiling innocently.  _ Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?  _ floats aimlessly through his head, vaguely incongruent.

 

He thanks her and takes it, not even caring any more. He even takes a couple of sips while she watches with a vaguely maternal air. Not for the first time today, he feels like he’s stepped into a movie.

 

“Thanks for, uh, making this,” he says, taking another sip. It’s not bad, but it’s a little weird and he doesn’t quite get how it’s supposed to help.

 

“Oh, I didn’t make it! Fai did,” she says, smiling again, and disappears around the corner with a whoosh of her old-fashioned nightgown.

 

There are a lot of things that Kurogane should be trying to figure out, but he suddenly feels exhausted. The day has been tiring and it must be finally catching up with him, or maybe the warm milk really does help. He barely has the energy to turn out the light.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it is only now that i am realizing that Googled Docs wants me, personally, to die and has fucked up a lot of formatting, hopefully it's still readable

He awakens from a confusing dream where he and Fai are the overworked parents to ten toddlers that look suspiciously like the other members of their little expedition. Something doesn’t feel right. He sits up slowly, his head feeling oddly heavy. His eyes, still slightly blurry, fix on the mug sitting on the bedside table—the warm milk from last night. It really must have worked, he thinks aimlessly, steps out of bed, and immediately loses control of his feet and falls heavily on his ass.

 

There’s something on the floor around his bed, something slippery, and when he puts a hand to his head to feel if it’s bleeding he finds to his horror that his hair has been moussed into a Mohawk. He manages to make his way to the door, sliding on the—what is this,  _ olive oil? _ His only thought is to get to the bathroom mirror and assess the damage. Furious, he slams the door open and is promptly drenched in a shower of something horrendously sticky that might be a mixture of honey, molasses and—Crazy Glue?

 

Sputtering wildly, he stands there just seething, trying to figure out who the hell has done this and how the hell he didn’t wake up. Then he remembers the warm milk.  _ The warm milk. _

 

“FAI!” he roars, staggering to a window. Fai made that stupid warm milk and probably drugged it, and Fai chose last night to sleep outside, since you can’t really prank someone you’re sharing a bed with, and he’s just the sort of juvenile idiot who’d be likely to pull a stunt like this.

 

Then suddenly screams echo from all around the house and chaos erupts. The guys’ room, it turns out, has been crisscrossed with a network of strings and the floors given the same slippery treatment. When someone tries to stand up and falls over, they automatically grab a string to try to catch themselves, but some of the strings trigger even worse effects and the guys are all stumbling around covered in unidentifiable substances and feathers. It turns out that the feathers have been put on the ceiling fan by someone who is either quite tall ( _ Fai _ ) or somehow managed to wrangle a chair in through the rather small door and back out again without waking four guys or falling over.

 

The guys unanimously blame the girls, who appear unaffected, despite Kurogane’s attempts to get them to blame Fai. Kimihiro, who can’t find his glasses, rips off the cheap cat ears someone has placed on his head and pronounces that this is all Yuuko’s fault, no question. Chiharu and Yamazaki join the congregation of angry victims; Chiharu is sporting a gelled spike of hair straight up from her head, and Yamazaki’s shirt is drenched with something that might be honey. Ryuu-ou’s hair has been spiked into a sort of fan and the tips have been dyed green with a dye that is hopefully temporary, Syaoran sports a shaving-cream afro and bib, and Doumeki has a mustache and goatee drawn on his face in something that hopefully is not permanent marker.

 

Kimihiro finds his glasses. They’re inside a cube of blue Jell-O.

 

Everyone is up by this point. The girls stand in the doorway and gasp and giggle at everyone’s ridiculous appearances. “Blue’s a good color on you,” Himawari tells Kurogane with a barely suppressed snicker, and this is how he learns that he, too, has been subject to hair dye.

 

They aren’t speaking to the others. It’s a unanimous, unspoken decision. They merely glare at the unaffected, obviously guilty parties over breakfast, even though every single one of them pleads innocence. Fai and Sakura come in from outside and claim to have no knowledge whatsoever of what’s been going on inside. Obviously at least one of them is guilty, and they’re going to make sure that person slips up and admits their guilt. (It’s Fai. Kurogane knows it is.)

 

“Well, whoever it was has obviously watched way too many Lindsay Lohan movies,” Chiharu says, breaking the silence. She’s greeted by blank stares. “What, haven’t any of you seen  _ The Parent Trap _ ? Like six of these pranks were blatantly stolen from there. Does one of you have a secret twin I don’t know about or something?”

 

Fai, who is pouring himself a glass of juice, suddenly drops his glass and has an inexplicable coughing fit. It’s probably his subconscious trying to admit his guilt. 

 

No one laughs at Chiharu’s attempt at humor, and the room falls into uneasy silence again. Most of them have managed to get at least mildly clean, helped along by the bucket of water triggered by opening the door to their bathroom and the water balloons that descend on them from the ceiling. It’s almost considerate, as pranks go. The hair dye is the kind that washes off after one or two bouts of vigorous shampooing, Doumeki’s “facial hair” turns out to be liquid eyeliner, and there is no Crazy Glue in the mysterious substance above Kurogane’s door, just something that may or may not be sweetened condensed milk. The Jell-O’d glasses are probably the hardest to salvage, but Kurogane gets them out in the end and submits them to ten minutes of vigorous cleaning to get the flecks of blue gel off them. Otherwise they seem to have suffered no ill effects, though Kimihiro loudly announces that he suspects them of being poisoned somehow, shooting a dirty look in Yuuko’s direction. 

 

When they emerge from the bathroom, their rooms have already been thoroughly cleaned, courtesy of the Daidoujis’ much-put-upon cleaning lady, whom Tomoyo has called in already. Kurogane’s floor shows no sign of ever having had olive oil anywhere near it, the boys’ room is completely cleared of strings and feathers, all the linens have vanished, and the cleaning lady is already starting work on the bathroom, whose drains have had about all they can take. 

 

Tomoyo announces that she needs some people to help with a shoot, just as if nothing has happened. Sakura and Syaoran will be doing a scene where Sakura’s character dramatically rescues Syaoran’s from the clutches of an evil sea monster, or something. She’s even set up a makeshift greenscreen in the boathouse, basically a tarp spraypainted an acid green, mostly evenly. The bulk of the scene, however, will be filmed on the actual beach. This, Kurogane supposes, is what she needed the screams for. The other girls, Yuuko and Fai are supposed to be extras, screaming ordinary townsfolk almost caught in the clutches of the murderous Green Screen. She wants the rest of them, too, but most beg off with vague excuses of other, more important preoccupations (read: revenge). Yamazaki, easygoing by nature, already seems to have forgotten about the prank war and joins Chiharu as Boyfriend of Random Bikini Girl #2. Syaoran wouldn’t have been much use in a prank war anyway, Kurogane thinks—too nice by far.

 

The rest of them have a Council of War at the table on the screened-in porch. It comes out that almost every single one of them drank  _ something _ before they went to bed last night, and in each case there was someone there while they did it. Doumeki went to the kitchen to get a glass of water and had it poured for him by Himawari, who was already at the fridge when he came in. Kimihiro made himself tea, but Yuuko came in while he was pouring it and in the course of their conversation she could easily have slipped something into his cup. (“I  _ knew _ it,” he seethes.) They text the others to ask, and it turns out that Syaoran drank the leftovers of a pot of cocoa that Sakura allegedly made for herself and Fai, and Chiharu and Yamazaki both partook of Kimihiro’s leftover tea. Only Ryuu-ou is immune, but it comes out that his own deep sleep was voluntary—he took some Dramamine before bed, both in case the slightly-too-much greasy boardwalk food caught up with him and in hopes that he’d sleep somewhat more calmly than the night before. Kimihiro points out that he also had to drink a glass of water, but they agree that this fact is irrelevant. In any case, every single one of the others is implicated.

 

So they get to work. They turn all of the furniture in the girls’ loft upside down and TP the railing, and a slightly overenthusiastic Ryuu-ou does the classic hanging bras trick. The rest aren’t entirely comfortable with it, but they decide to leave it because it is kind of hilarious. (Kimihiro agrees to it wholeheartedly once Yuuko’s stuff is involved.) They hide all of the girls’ left socks—Doumeki’s idea. Kimihiro uses the shiny, industrial-looking printer in the study to print out hundreds of blurry, zoomed-in pictures of Shrek and plasters them all over Yuuko’s walls, in her bathroom, even on her floor. He hides them in her closet, on her hairbrush, in her drawers, in her bed. They hide all the alcohol and leave only empty bottles. They short-sheet all the beds, even Kurogane and Fai’s, in hopes that Fai will come back to take a nap at some point. Ryuu-ou runs down to a local joke shop and gets a bunch of rubber snakes and spiders, Whoopee cushions, fake vomit and dog shit, the works, and judiciously applies them. Kimihiro wants to fill Yuuko’s precious Jacuzzi with Jell-O and is only barely dissuaded by the knowledge that it would take a walk-in freezer or an act of magic to chill that much Jell-O at one time. He is eventually satisfied with repurposed feathers and a large, hairy rubber spider at the bottom.

 

They rig up the front door with a complicated apparatus that dumps an empty bucket as a feint and then showers the unlucky entrant with mayonnaise as soon as they cross the threshold. They fill water balloons with all kinds of things, rig some of them to fall, and prep the rest to throw at the others once they get back. Ryuu-ou finds a bunch of heavy-duty water guns in the garage, and they fill these with food-colored water and stick them in the fridge. They also find Nerf guns and darts and create a stockpile. They text the other three to tip them off, and they promise to arrive slightly early (Syaoran) or late (the other two), Syaoran to man the hose, the others to provide backup once the war has well and truly started. Kurogane rigs Fai and Sakura’s hammocks to tip over and preps a kiddie pool to shove them into. Somehow he’s gotten way too into this—it’s like he has something to prove, or maybe he’s just that competitive. In any case, Fai is going  _ down _ .

 

It goes about as you would expect. Sakura’s voice at the door, around three or so, advises the others to look up; they see the bucket, have a whispered conference, and quickly slam the door open as they jump back. It’s empty, of course. “Someone must have triggered it already,” Himawari says, relieved. They step cautiously through the door, hit the tripwire, and all hell breaks loose. Kurogane, Ryuu-ou, Kimihiro and Doumeki, from their concealed positions behind furniture and the kitchen counter, open fire. The others shriek and cover their heads with their hands as they are bombarded with first mayo and then freezing cold water, food-colored bloodred. Nerf darts and water balloons mostly find their marks, and when they make to retreat out the front door, Syaoran blasts them full-on with the hose.

 

The four-man team sneaks out the back door and crouches by windows, waiting for confirmation that their other surprises have been found. There are a few screams as they walk through the house; water balloons, a snake, a dangling spider. Someone steps in the fake vomit and freaks out for a second. Someone sits on a Whoopee cushion, and Ryuu-ou can barely stifle his giggles. Then they look up, and suddenly there are shrieks of a more…. angry caliber. Tomoyo and Yuuko seem to think the whole thing is hilarious, but Himawari and Sakura sound  _ pissed _ that their bras are festooned everywhere. They’re pretty mad about the flipped furniture, too, since none of them are really strong enough to move all of the heavy antiques, but Fai and Yuuko help and they come down looking satisfied after only a few minutes.

 

Then Yuuko goes into her room. They sneak to the window to watch her reaction. She thinks it’s funny, apparently, although she does freak out a little at the spider in the Jacuzzi. 

 

“Just you wait,” Kimihiro says with a look that could almost be described as evil. “By tonight, she’s gonna  _ flip _ about those Shrek pictures. It’s a long game.”

 

“Riiiight,” Kurogane says.

 

They probably won’t find out about the left socks until much later either. There weren’t actually that many socks to steal, this being a beach vacation and all, but the weather is unpredictable at this time of year so everyone has brought at least one pair and a sturdy pair of close-toed shoes.

 

“I need a drink,” they hear Yuuko say through the window, and a few minutes later she lets out an ear-piercing shriek. Kimihiro smirks and high-fives Doumeki.

 

Chiharu and Yamazaki have slipped in under the radar and are doing recon in the house. Chiharu texts Ryuu-ou after a couple of minutes that “Fai’s gonna go take a nap—short-sheet time!”

 

Kurogane has to see this, so he nonchalantly walks inside and goes into their room, pretending to be changing his shoes.

 

“That wasn’t very nice, you know,” Fai says when he walks in.

 

“Neither were your pranks,” he retorts.

 

“I didn’t do a thing.” He continues to assert his innocence! The nerve!

 

Kurogane has already adjusted the thermostat—the room is cold, and getting colder. Fai tries to lie down on top of the blankets, but after a few seconds he shivers and pulls the blankets back. He tries to shove his feet in, only to find that they won’t go down any further than halfway.

 

“Hey!” he shouts, but Kurogane has already run away, laughing.

 

Predictably, he goes to the hammock instead. Before he knows what’s hit him, Kurogane has tipped the hammock over and sent him flying into a kiddie pool that Syaoran’s just filled with water. Annoyingly enough, he  _ still _ doesn’t get mad—he just laughs and brushes wet hair out of his eyes and looks irritatingly good with his shirt plastered to his body like that.

 

The pranks die down after that, although they have no doubt that the Enemy is plotting a retaliation and it’ll probably hit when they least expect it. The Enemy, as it turns out, is much too busy getting ready for the dance to think about war and has put pranks on hold for a few hours.

 

“Wait, dance?” Kurogane says, getting a sinking feeling.

 

“It’s an end-of-summer deal,” Tomoyo tells him, evidently having put aside enmities in the face of a much greater excitement. “They have one here every year and we’re all going—didn’t I tell you?”

 

Of course not. “Must have slipped your mind,” he says with a sardonic edge. Does no one tell him anything around here?

 

“You don’t need to wear anything special, but if you have a nice shirt maybe wear that,” she says brightly and flits away to prepare.

 

Kurogane heaves a sigh, tells Fai he can have the room to change, and grabs a few essentials from his suitcase—nicer shirt, hair gel, comb, the dragon ear wrap he wears only occasionally and doesn’t even know why he’s brought, a couple of bracelets. He, Syaoran and Kimihiro take the bathroom while the other guys change in their room.

 

“You are  _ not _ wearing that,” he tells Syaoran with a look of horror.  _ That _ is an olive button down and  _ cargo pants _ . Syaoran sighs and changes into something almost as bad—a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts.

 

“Jesus, kid, do you want to look like a tourist or a guy at a party? Because that’s definitely tourist.”

 

Eventually they find a halfway decent pair of jeans—Kimihiro’s, actually, but they’re around the same size. Kimihiro ends up providing almost the whole outfit, since his dress sense is infinitely better than Syaoran’s and he’s got nice clothes to spare. 

 

Syaoran doesn’t make a half bad prep, Kurogane thinks, surveying their work. The final outfit is a nice pair of jeans, slightly on the skinny side, the olive button-down (which isn’t half bad in the end) and a borrowed cardigan. He attempts to do something with his hair to very little success and Kurogane has to undo the whole thing again.

 

Kimihiro, once he’s finished dealing with his fashion-blind brother, ends up going way too formal and Kurogane has to fix that too. Sure, he looks nice in the dress pants, vest and white button-down with the sleeves rolled up, but the bow tie is a bit much.

 

“The vest is a bit much too, actually,” Kurogane tells him. Eventually they leave the vest unbuttoned and roll the shirt a bit more casually, and Kurogane persuades him to go for dark jeans instead of dress pants. The overall effect still isn’t quite “beach party,” but it’ll do.

 

_ Look at me, I’m playing fashion consultant to a couple of teenagers _ , Kurogane thinks despairingly.  _ I’m not exactly the most fashion-forward person either, but at least I know not to wear goddamn  _ cargo pants.

 

He himself goes for a vaguely-Hawaiian but not full-on touristy shirt in a hibiscus print with a muscle tank underneath, nice-ish jeans, slightly punker hair and the dragon earring, which Syaoran thinks is just about the coolest thing ever. 

 

Of course, they have to wait another half hour for the girls (and Fai, who seems to be taking just as long to prepare his own outfit, despite not having to do makeup—well, he  _ probably _ isn’t doing makeup. Is he—is he doing makeup?). The other guys have cleaned up fairly well, although Ryuu-ou still looks kind of dorky. That probably can’t be helped, though. It’s a miracle they’ve been able to do as much as they have for Syaoran. Kurogane is pretty sure he was never that much of a dork, although when he thinks about it he probably was, or worse.

 

Then, finally, the girls and Fai emerge, Fai first, the girls after another five minutes or so. They can hear the party in full swing by now—although it’s down by the boardwalk, the booming music carries, and some people are evidently having pregames of some sort at their own houses because there’s music from their neighbors as well.

 

Kurogane carefully avoids looking Fai in the eye, so he doesn’t really see what he’s wearing until later. He focuses on the girls, who are a rainbow of pastels, except for Yuuko, who’s gone with a flaming red. She’s way overdressed for a beach party, but of course she would be—it’s  _ Yuuko _ , he thinks. Her dress is a slinky little number whose skirt almost seems to wrap all the way around—on the top left it’s shortest, and then it gets longer and longer until it trails on the floor at the bottom left, leaving a dramatic slit and an almost triangular look. There’s some kind of metallic gold embroidery on the bodice and she’s stuck a giant red rose in her elaborately styled hair, because with her nothing is ever simple. Idly, he wonders how she’s going to dance in that thing. It hasn’t got any straps, so it seems poised to fall off any second, and the skirt looks made to trip over, not to mention the spike heels. When she turns around and he sees the corset back, it explains a little, but he still has no idea how she’s going to survive an entire night in it. Also,  _ sand. _

 

Sakura looks adorable, but uncomfortable, and Tomoyo has obviously made the dress for her and forced her to wear it. It’s pale pink with puffed sleeves that he has to wonder whether Sakura has made Tomoyo tone down at all—they’re already pretty big, but knowing Tomoyo she probably wanted bigger. It has a big bow in the back and little bows on the skirt (Tomoyo and her bows, he thinks, shaking his head) and it’s really quite short, although when she twirls he can see she’s wearing a petticoat at least and probably also shorts.

 

“Do you guys like it?” she says nervously. They all respond in the affirmative, to varying degrees of coherence. Kurogane puts a comforting hand on Syaoran’s shoulder, hoping it will remind him to breathe.

 

“Should I get the ribbon?” she asks quickly. They stare blankly at her. “Oh, sorry! There’s a hair ribbon but I’m not sure if I like it.”

 

She tries it, and the majority pronounces it cute, so she keeps it on. “At least it’ll keep your hair out of your face more,” Kurogane tells her pragmatically.

 

Tomoyo herself has kept it to only two bows, practically a miracle. She wears a lavender halter dress with a bow at the back of her neck. For some reason, the back is way longer than the front. It doesn’t really make sense to Kurogane, but she seems to like it, so whatever. She’s put her hair up for once—a high ponytail, tied with—you guessed it, a bow.

 

Himawari has kept her own hair the same as always, although he has no idea why she insists on those curled pigtails that must take about a year to do every morning. She wears a yellow dress with tiny white polka dots and a white ruffle along the edges. Tomoyo probably made it, because of the ruffles and also the weird short/long thing, although it’s shorter than hers and the difference is less. Also, the wide belt is designed to look like a bow when clasped, a sure Tomoyo touch.

 

Chiharu has taken her pinkish-lavender hair down from its usual two braids, and it hangs in waves to just below her shoulders. She looks a lot older with it like that. Her dress is white eyelet with straps that  _ tie _ , which Kurogane thinks is absolutely ridiculous and gives it about two seconds to fall apart. Yamazaki seems to like it, though, although he seems to love her pretty much no matter what, even with all the crap they give each other sometimes.

 

Tomoyo and Yuuko herd everyone into two lines, guys and girls, to take a group photo. It reminds Kurogane of his senior prom—not a night he remembers fondly. He ends up in the middle, next to Fai, because they’re the two tallest. Yuuko stands in front of them in the “window” between their shoulders.

 

“Hi,” Fai says quietly as Tomoyo gets the camera set up.

 

“Hey,” Kurogane says back, and risks a glance over at him. Tonight seems to be the night for unusual hair choices—Fai has tied his up in a high ponytail, which looks surprisingly good on him. He’s wearing a—what are they called, peasant shirts? Yeah, peasant shirt, white with a blocky blue pattern around the collar. It leaves a lot of his neck exposed. Kurogane looks away, blushing a little, but not before he notes the stupid pointless dangly things that those kinds of shirts always have. If you’re gonna  _ have _ those, why not tie them in a bow, like they’re supposed to be? Or are they not supposed to be?

 

“Feels like prom night, huh?” Fai says, voicing Kurogane’s earlier thought.

 

“These guys are kinda young for that, aren’t they?”

 

“One more year, I think.”

 

“Okay, now smile! We’re gonna take three,” Tomoyo yells from up front and dashes back to her place in line. The timer goes off, the flash goes off, rinse and repeat. Kurogane is pretty sure he isn’t smiling, but at least he won’t have his eyes closed, like Yamazaki inevitably will. He almost never smiles in pictures.

 

“Okay, now couples!” Tomoyo says brightly. There are scattered groans, Kurogane’s loudest of all.

 

Chiharu and Yamazaki take a few cute couple-y pictures, the usual fare. Then she makes Syaoran and Sakura do it because “it would be such a cute promo photo for the movie!” They don’t seem to see through the thin excuse and do a few cursory poses, both blushing.

 

“Anyone else?” No one else wants to declare themselves a couple, even if they maybe sorta are one. A couple of people glare and/or cough meaningfully in Kimihiro and Doumeki’s direction, but they ignore it.

 

“Okay, let’s just do a couple pictures of Class of ’17, guys!”

 

There are more groans this time, but they comply. It takes an age. Sakura and Tomoyo. Chiharu and Sakura. The three of them. The three of them and Himawari. Himawari and Kimihiro and Doumeki (despite none of them actually being Class of ’17—they’re all juniors). Sakura, Tomoyo and Syaoran. Sakura, Tomoyo, Chiharu and Yamazaki. Those four plus Syaoran. Those four plus Syaoran and Himawari. All of them together. Then Yuuko insists on one with Kimihiro “for the bulletin board at work,” which he protests heartily but ends up doing anyway.

 

“The party’s probably over by now,” Kurogane says, perhaps a little more loudly than he should have but definitely as loudly as he intended to.

 

Finally they step onto the beach. The party is far from over, although Kurogane kind of almost wishes it were.

 

“Oh, I love this song!” Tomoyo exclaims, and drags them all onto the “dance floor,” which is literally just a designated patch of sand near the DJ. It’s something about…. starships? with a lot of fast rapping and an electronic beat. It is very catchy, he has to admit, but he refuses to dance.  He, Syaoran, Kimihiro and Doumeki stand awkwardly on the edge, occasionally giving each other sympathetic looks, as the others dance in one of those weird circle things that always seem to form. 

 

They grab drinks, water for the kids, some kind of punch for Kurogane. It’s got rum in it (at least he  _ thinks  _ it’s rum) and he doesn’t want to know what else and tastes vaguely tropical. All it’s missing is a little umbrella. 

 

They try to have a conversation, but the music is too loud and they give up after a few frustrating tries and just watch everyone else dance. Fai is a surprisingly good dancer for someone who can trip over thin air and flails his arms around all the time. He’s doing some kind of thing with Yuuko that seems to be almost ballroom-like to Kurogane’s untrained eye, and the others are cheering them on as they do increasingly complicated turns and things. He would not be surprised if either of them knew how to tango, nor if they managed to show it off somehow tonight. Yuuko’s certainly dressed for it.

 

Sure enough, the next song seems to have the right beat for it, and they  _ do  _ both know how to tango, or have a surprising ability to fake it. They’re dancing really close, and Kurogane feels a stab of something that might be jealousy. He quickly looks away.

 

Tomoyo is teaching Sakura some kind of tango or Latin dance, too, although Sakura can’t seem to get the hip movement right and keeps stopping and giggling. Syaoran is resolutely looking the other way. Kurogane rolls his eyes.

 

Kimihiro has decided to brave the dance floor and is attempting… something with Himawari. Neither of them seems to quite know what they’re doing and are just sort of shuffling their feet. Yamazaki seems to be stepping on Chiharu’s feet more than actually dancing.

 

Then the song changes, and for once it’s one he knows. Island in the Sun, by Weezer—probably appropriate for the setting, although slightly incorrect.

 

“Okay, you are  _ not _ standing over there any more,” Fai is suddenly saying. When did he get over here? “Come dance!”

 

Fai grabs his hand and drags him over, and somehow he’s… dancing with Fai? He doesn’t really know what to do with his hands, or his feet, or—anything. He’s an awful dancer to begin with, and Fai isn’t exactly the least intimidating partner in the world. He can’t seem to move his feet more than a tiny shuffle.

 

“No, no—come on, just sort of sway to the music, you don’t have to do anything fancy!” Fai smiles at him and he  _ really _ can’t figure out what to do with his feet.

 

Fai firmly grabs his left wrist and pulls his hand down to rest on his shoulder. The right hand, which Fai is still holding, goes out to the side, and Fai’s hand goes to his waist. He’s  _ leading _ , Kurogane realizes. This should annoy him more than it does. Somehow, his feet are moving again and he manages to make it through without stepping on Fai’s feet or tripping or something, although he still feels awkward. They’re uncomfortably close, close enough for Kurogane to feel the warmth coming off of Fai’s body, and he unconsciously tenses to avoid touching him as much as possible.

 

“I’m taller, I should be leading,” he says after a minute, but his argument is weak. Fai just looks at him, eyebrow raised, and he mumbles “yeah, okay” and shuts up.

 

Fai makes him dance to another song, which at least has a somewhat similar beat, but lets him go when another heavy electronic beat comes on and he starts to look panicked. The circle re-forms for a song Kurogane is pretty sure the kids should  _ not _ be listening to, bleeped out or not, which is (as far as he can tell) centered around a flimsy snake euphemism and also lots of butts. Thankfully, none of them attempt to twerk. He’s not sure he could survive that. From literally any of them.

 

He sneaks off again, this time going to the bar, a little farther away from the music and the crowd. Yuuko is there too, come to get a drink, and Tomoyo and Sakura appear a minute later, heading for the ice cream stand a little ways off.

 

“—just like in Aquamarine—” Tomoyo is saying, but breaks off with a giggle when she sees Kurogane. This should probably worry him, but he’s kind of past that tonight.

 

“Hey,” he calls, and they turn to look at him, expecting to get yelled at. Instead, he just says, looking at Sakura, “Go ask Syaoran to dance,” and turns back to the bar, ending the conversation.

 

She does, blushing furiously, and he sees them head out to the dancefloor. Good.

 

Yuuko is ready to go back after a minute longer. She’s produced an elaborate Spanish shawl from somewhere—he could swear she didn’t have it on her when they left, and that tiny clutch is definitely not big enough to hold much more than a lipstick or two, or whatever girls put in those useless little beaded things. She’s consumed an incredible amount of alcohol already but isn’t acting all that drunk—well, compared to how she acts normally, which might  _ be _ drunk.

 

Yuuko asks him to dance. She might or might not be joking. He sputters for a minute, but eventually accepts, knowing she’ll force him to whether he likes it or not.

 

Sakura and Syaoran are dancing pretty close, both blushing, of course, and Syaoran seems to be saying something.  _ Good _ . Kimihiro and Doumeki are dancing together; Chiharu and Yamazaki, of course, and Himawari is dancing with Ryuu-ou—spares, probably. Tomoyo has found some cute girl—good for her! Fai is—where  _ is _ Fai?

 

Kurogane and Yuuko have just started dancing, as far apart as Kurogane can physically force them, when Fai comes up behind Yuuko and taps her on the shoulder.

 

“Mind if I cut in?” he says. Kurogane had no idea people actually  _ said  _ that.

 

Resigning himself, he puts a hand on Fai’s shoulder and sticks out the other one, but Fai is not having it.

 

“This isn’t that kind of song,” he says, and to Kurogane’s surprise grabs both his hands and does some kind of elaborate twirly thing. Kurogane moves his feet a little, but lets him do most of the work, since he seems to know what he’s doing.

 

“… _ when I am with you, there’s no place I’d rather be… _ ” the song goes, and then there’s some kind of elaborate violin solo during which Fai drags him all over the place. It’s very catchy, though, and has a sort of exuberant feel to it, although he thinks the literal spinning around in circles that Fai makes both of them do is a bit much. The others seem to be doing it too, though—the girls’ skirts poof out when they do it and it would probably look very pretty from above.

 

The song, which started a minute or so before they actually started dancing, is over very quickly. It segues into a slow song. Like a real slow song. Kurogane feels himself start to panic. On the plus side, Syaoran probably has it about seventeen times worse than he does?

 

Without thinking about it, he starts to back away a little, which makes it even more jarring when Fai literally pulls him forward and—there is no other word for it—wraps his arms around his waist. He almost falls forward and automatically grabs for Fai’s shoulders, which seems to be the right thing to do, although Fai does move his arms a little. 

 

He’s pretty sure his face is an interesting shade of red, although it can’t be worse than Syaoran’s. He and Sakura, who Kurogane can see over Fai’s shoulder, are slowly inching closer and blushing more and more as the proximity increases.

 

At least slow dancing isn’t  _ hard _ , but that’s only a small comfort at this point. He feels himself relax after a minute or so, which is almost more worrying than if he hadn’t. Still, he turns his head over his left shoulder and avoids looking Fai in the eyes, partly because he doesn’t want to make this more awkward, but mostly because he’s afraid of what his own face will reveal. He is not normally given to feelings of a… sentimental nature, but there’s something very comforting (!) and almost—right? about being so close to Fai. It scares him.

 

He’d thought this was just an attraction thing. People get attracted to random people they see on the street, to celebrities, to fictional characters—it’s not like it  _ means _ anything, he’s kept telling himself. Plenty of people find their friends attractive but never do anything about it. It’s not like he’s in  _ love _ with the guy.

 

Except…. if it is.

 

Sakura, blushing furiously, has finally worked up the courage to rest her chin on Syaoran’s shoulder. Syaoran tenses for a second, then smiles, almost in disbelief, with something inexplicable in his eyes that’s almost sad. Kurogane catches his eye and gives him a tiny nod, and he grins back, then raises his eyebrows questioningly.

 

Kurogane’s eyes widen and he’s about to shake his head— _ no, it is  _ not  _ what it looks like! _ when Fai does the same thing that Sakura’s just done and completely invalidates his argument. He gulps and mouths “ _ help me _ ” in Syaoran’s direction, but he just shrugs the shoulder not occupied by Sakura and laughs a little, then tentatively brings one of his hands up to rest in Sakura’s hair.

 

Well, it can’t exactly be comfortable to  _ not _ do that, Kurogane reasons, a little frantic. And, and he is the taller one, so it makes sense—his mind spins around in ever smaller circles, refusing to touch the subject he’s avoiding above all.

 

He’s almost worked up the courage to copy Syaoran with the hand thing when the song stops and he quickly drops the hand back to where it was. Some ridiculous 80s thing is playing now—“Love is a Battlefield”?

 

They stay like that for just a few seconds too long, and Kurogane is about to say something, anything, when he sees Fai’s face as he pulls away.

 

“I’m—a little dizzy,” he says faintly, and Kurogane notices the angry red sunburn across the top of his nose, illuminated in a sliver of moonlight.

 

“You  _ idiot _ ,” he says. “Did you wear sunscreen today?”

 

“Yes! Oh, but the tube ran out and there wasn’t any more. I guess I must have gotten a little sunburned, huh?” He laughs a little.

 

No wonder he was resting his chin on Kurogane’s shoulder. He’s probably feverish, Kurogane thinks, the  _ idiot _ , and of course there’s always an explanation for everything.

 

“Okay, come on, we’re going back,” he says with a firm hand on Fai’s shoulder.

 

“Oh, but the party isn’t over!” He’s definitely not okay. He’s swaying a little and almost definitely has a bit of a fever. This must be one of those awful sunburns that makes people feel sick for a while. Kurogane has never had one, but he’s known pale people who have.

 

“Screw the goddamn party. You’ve got a bad sunburn and probably a fever, and if you don’t take a Tylenol or something and get some aloe on those burns, you’ll feel awful for the next few  _ days  _ instead of the next few hours. Come  _ on _ .”

 

At least it’s this instead of too much to drink, and at least Kurogane hasn’t had that much himself and his head is clear. He’ll just have to trust that Yuuko can keep the kids out of trouble for another little while. It’s maybe ten forty-five, so they should be heading back fairly soon anyway.

 

He gets some medicine into Fai, who protests weakly, and takes a look at the sunburn. Thankfully, it isn’t all that extensive, but Fai is so pale that just his nose and the tops of his feet will put him out of commission for a while. It doesn’t even look that bad, but it’s obviously enough to be debilitating. Fai complains of a headache, too, which isn’t at all surprising. Kurogane patiently puts aloe on the burns and double-checks that they aren’t anywhere else. According to Fai, who admittedly is somewhat muddled at the moment, the sunscreen ran out before he could do his face, a bit of his shoulders (which are a little burned, although he had a shirt on for most of the time) and his feet, which he didn’t think were necessary anyway. Amateur mistake.

 

He shoves Fai into bed, despite his protests, and sure enough by the time Kurogane comes back from getting a glass of water he’s fast asleep. He’s almost off the bed by the time Kurogane goes to bed a couple of hours later—he’s been tossing and turning feverishly, not surprising.

 

Kurogane wakes the next morning from a somewhat fitful sleep—he’s almost started to feel a bit feverish by extension, although Fai seemed to be much better after a couple of hours. Fai is gone, and he wonders what time it is. He finds himself falling back to sleep a little, his body not seeming to think he’s gotten enough sleep.

 

Then suddenly everything is cold and wet and  _ so fucking cold oh my god _ . Ice water. Someone has dumped a bucket of  _ ice water _ on his head. He sits up, sputtering and spitting out little chunks of ice, and when he brushes his dripping hair out of his eyes he sees Fai sitting there calmly. His hair is still in that ponytail from last night, but the tie has slipped down so it’s more towards the nape of his neck, and a few strands are hanging over his face.

 

“Good morning,  _ Kurogane _ ,” he says with a smirk that could almost be described as evil, and then points something orange and plasticky right at Kurogane’s face and fires it at point-blank range, peppering him with some kind of blue pellets that sting like hell and melt into disgusting-tasting slush when they hit.

 

“That’s payback,” he says, still smirking, and walks out of the room. 

 

“For what, basically saving your ass last night?” Kurogane shouts after him after he finishes spitting out all the blue slush. “This is how you thank me?!”

 

He’d better not have been faking last night. He couldn’t have been, but somehow he seems just fine this morning, although his nose is still red and starting to peel a little.

 

When Kurogane has washed his face and recovered a bit of his dignity, he goes out to the kitchen, only to find it in chaos  _ yet again. _

 

“Is there ever a normal morning in this house?” he says aloud, not expecting an answer, and sure enough everyone is too busy with their own problems to answer him. Yuuko is almost definitely hungover and also looks like she didn’t get any sleep last night, Kimihiro and Doumeki aren’t talking, Himawari is staring miserably into her mug of tea, and several people are in various states of dishevelment and aren’t talking to Sakura, who looks rather smug.

 

“Long night, huh?” Kurogane asks Yuuko, pulling up a chair next to her. She groans a little and looks up at him, revealing truly astounding dark circles and wild hair.

 

“Those  _ fucking _ Shrek pictures,” she says with vitriol, and it takes him a second to remember Kimihiro’s “it’ll take a while” prank. Apparently it’s given him all he could want and then some. “When I got back, they were  _ staring _ at me, and I kept  _ finding  _ them places and it just didn’t stop! I stayed up tearing them all down but every time I thought I was finished, there were  _ more _ !” She still looks a little drunk.

 

“Have some coffee,” he suggests, and turns to a more pressing problem. He gives her about half an hour to bounce back and then she’ll be the same as ever.

 

He just comes right out and says it. “Sakura, what did you do?” 

 

“Oh, I pranked them all,” she says, face calm. It’s obvious who exactly she’s pranked from their reactions to this. Even Tomoyo isn’t speaking to her best friend, Chiharu and Yamazaki are glaring at her, and even  _ Syaoran _ seems upset. Ryuu-ou makes a “tch” noise and clatters his spoon on his cereal bowl.

 

“You  _ betrayed _ me!” Tomoyo bursts out. “We were supposed to be on the same team!”

 

“Well, you  _ started _ the whole thing, so I thought you deserved what was coming to you,” Sakura says, still eerily calm. Gone is the cute, innocent girl—this Sakura will stop at nothing. Kurogane has a sudden vision of her slinging pistols in a long leather duster.

 

Then he realizes what she’s just said. “Wait, you  _ what _ ?” He glares at Tomoyo.

 

“Okay, maybe I kind of set things going, but you guys continued the prank war, not me!” She backs away a little.

 

“So you drugged everyone’s drinks? That was  _ you _ ?” He’s inches from her face now.

 

“W-well, it was Yuuko’s idea—she did most of it! It was just a bit of Dramamine!” Tomoyo is backed up against the island in the kitchen. “I-it was probably a good thing anyway, we all ate so much gross food that day!”

 

Kurogane turns away for a minute to look for Yuuko, but she’s vanished, hopefully to do something about her hair and her hangover. He’ll let her live… for now.

 

“Why the  _ hell  _ did you do that?” he yells at Tomoyo instead. The others are gathered around her too now, glaring at her, and she looks a little panicked.

 

“I thought it would be fun! Also I… kind of needed some proper screams for the movie. I knew my extras couldn’t scream convincingly for a greenscreen, so I decided to use this as a kind of ADR.” It all sounds so simple and ethical when she says it.

 

“So you implicated a bunch of people so we’d retaliate, is that it?” Kurogane is doing all the talking, but the others look pissed too.

 

“W-well, yeah…”

 

The room erupts into yelling for a moment. Everyone points accusing fingers at Tomoyo, each blaming her for something different, although Fai doesn’t seem to be among the crowd.

 

“Everybody SHUT UP!” Sakura’s authoritative voice rises above the crowd. She’s taken the high ground, standing on one of the kitchen chairs, and is, in fact, holding a pistol—well, a water pistol, anyway.

 

Everyone does shut up.

 

“Tomoyo made a mistake, and we’re all pretty mad about that. But we’re going to let her live with it and forgive her for what she’s done. She’s been punished enough—I saw to that.” Kurogane sees the warrior princess she might have been in her look. “Anyway, when you think about it, it isn’t all that bad. No one got hurt, and it really was all in good fun. So no one’s going to hold grudges because of this, and we’re all going to go back to normal and forget this ever happened. Okay?”

 

Everyone nods, dazed. Syaoran looks like he’s about ready to fall at her feet.

 

After that everything really does go back to normal. Sakura talks and laughs with her friends, who tell her that she definitely won the prank war, if a winner can be declared in such a war. Kurogane sees her and Tomoyo high-five after a few minutes. The only problems remaining are between the triad of Himawari, Kimihiro and Doumeki.

 

Kurogane resigns himself to fixing all of it and puts a comforting hand on Himawari’s shoulder.

 

“Hey, what happened?” he asks, trying to sound sympathetic but mostly coming out gruff. He’s no good at this comforting thing.

 

“Oh, nothing, it’s just—I tried to pull a couple of pranks on the guys, ‘cause I never got a chance to do any, but they didn’t work right. Nothing goes right around me!” Her voice wobbles and she sounds like she’s on the verge of crying.

 

“All right, come on,” he says, ushering her out. She looks confused but follows him.

 

“What you need,” he says once they’re out of earshot, “is a partner in crime. Just because Sakura can pull off all that crap on her own doesn’t mean it’s easy. Of course your pranks went wrong—you didn't have anyone to help you set them up, or test them out with!”

 

_ And what those boys need _ , he thinks,  _ is to be forced to talk to each other. Two birds with one stone. _

 

“Let’s lock them in a closet,” he says abruptly. Himawari’s eyes widen, but then she starts to smile a little.

 

“And then we can set up more stuff while they’re stuck there and can’t do anything!” She’s smiling now.

 

That wasn’t his intention, but sure, if it makes her happy. “Okay, so what’s your plan?” He’s resigned himself to being magician’s assistant on this one, so to speak.

 

She tells him. It’s a fairly decent plan, but needs a few adjustments, which he provides. Half an hour later, two very annoyed guys are pounding on the door of one of the linen closets, and Himawari is snapping into action.

 

She goes all out—prank calls, elaborate mechanisms, the works. What she  _ really _ wants is “something like in  _ It’s A Wonderful Life _ ,” which no one has any idea how to go about doing (she’s enlisted the help of pretty much everyone by this point). Then Tomoyo says “Oh, you mean like this?”, pushes a button on the wall of a room everyone had thought was a solarium, and reveals a pool just casually under the floor.

 

“We had it built like that so the room has two uses!” she says cheerfully as everyone gapes at her.

 

The prank works perfectly. The guys are let out after forty-five minutes or so and immediately head for the solarium, that being the least claustrophobic-feeling room in the house. This part of the prank was the iffiest, but they do it as if it were scripted, arguing spiritedly the whole way. Obviously Kurogane’s makeshift therapy hasn’t worked exactly as planned, but at least they’re talking?

 

When they’ve reached the exact right point in the floor, Himawari sneaks in and holds down the button, and they fall straight into the water. Even the usually unflappable Doumeki screams and flails a little.

 

That’s when it starts to go wrong. It turns out that Kimihiro really, really hates water. And also can’t swim.

 

He reacts pretty much like a cat who’s been dumped into a bath—flailing around and screaming bloody murder—but, also like a cat, he has no idea how to get out. Instead, the weight of his clothes starts to drag him down and he panics even more.

 

Himawari gasps and starts crying for real this time. “Everything I touch goes horribly wrong!” she wails. “I’m s-sorry!”

 

In short, it’s total chaos. Kurogane is about to jump in the pool and try to do  _ something _ , anything, when Doumeki, cool-headed as always, grabs Kimihiro, pulls him up, drags him to the edge, gets out himself and quickly pulls him out of the water, then into a comforting hug. It all takes less than a minute.

 

Kurogane has the presence of mind to hit the button, and the pool disappears under the floor again. They don’t seem to notice.

 

“You—saved me,” Kimihiro gasps. “ _ Thank you _ .”

 

“It’s okay. You’re okay.” Doumeki runs a comforting hand through his hair, and he chokes back a sob and buries his face in Doumeki’s shoulder. Kurogane is pretty sure he sees Doumeki kiss the top of his head.

 

“See, it turned out alright in the end,” he whispers to Himawari, pulling her into a brief one-armed hug. She looks up at him, puzzled, her face still streaked with tears, and he points out the scene across the room. Her eyes widen as she sees them kiss, and she and Kurogane quickly sneak away.

 

“See, they needed that,” Kurogane tells her once they’re a safe distance away. “They probably would have gone on being emotionally constipated for  _ weeks _ if it hadn’t happened. Sometimes something has to go wrong in order to make something good happen.”

 

She nods, wiping away the last of her tears, and abruptly hugs him, whispering a thank you in his ear.

 

They take the rest of the morning to recover from the day’s drama and leave for home after lunch. Tomoyo does some last-minute sound recording, all waves and gulls and “ambient beach sounds,” whatever that means.

 

Kurogane places himself in Yuuko’s borrowed minivan for the trip home, on the grounds that his legs are just too long to ride in that ridiculous  _ thing _ of Fai’s for more than a few minutes without getting awful cramps. (Actually, it’s pretty true, although it’s never stopped him before.) He is stuck with Yamazaki again, although this time he has Chiharu to mitigate it a little. Sakura, Syaoran, Ryuu-ou and Tomoyo are riding with Fai, and the rest are with Yuuko. 

 

Kurogane offers to drive, mostly because he really doesn’t trust Yuuko to drive. Ever. She accepts readily enough and instead takes shotgun and becomes music czar, which is a small price to pay for one’s life, as Kurogane sees it.

 

Two couples in a minivan ends up slightly difficult. In the end, Yamazaki sits in one of the middle seats with Chiharu behind him (“to strangle him if he starts telling those stupid stories,” she says cheerfully), and Himawari takes the other middle seat, probably at least partly so she doesn’t have to look at Kimihiro, whose, er,  _ accident _ she still feels very guilty about.

 

The trip is uneventful, thankfully. Kurogane only has to break up one fight (Yuuko is no help, of course), no one cries, and Yuuko’s music choice is so weird that  _ everyone _ either hates or is confused by half of it and likes the rest. Most of it none of them have ever heard before, so there is no “noooo I hate that song” or “crank this one up” nonsense. Eventually they get her to just find a Top 40 radio station, and even Kurogane is fine with this by a certain point.

 

It turns out to have been a good thing that Kurogane chose this particular car. Fai’s car doesn’t arrive until the next day—somehow, it gets a flat tire and that idiot didn’t bring a spare to leave room for more luggage. They end up having to get a motel room until a replacement tire can be found, because of course, of  _ course _ everyone’s phone has died. They sleep there and somehow get on the road in the morning with a spare Fai has miraculously managed to charm off a neighbor, according to Syaoran’s account the next day.

 

“Sakura and Tomoyo put it on,” he says, and somehow that doesn’t surprise Kurogane at all. “You would think that between three guys one of us would be able to do such a traditionally ‘manly’ thing, but no, it had to be the two cute girls who don’t even look like they could lift a twig.” He laughs. “I guess Sakura’s dad taught both his kids and I don’t know if Tomoyo learned it from her or from her mom, but either way, they had it on in minutes. I think Sakura could probably be a mechanic if she wanted to.”

 

“I think Sakura could do pretty much anything she wanted to,” Kurogane says, a little wryly, and Syaoran nods with a matching look.

 

When he goes back to the coffee shop, everything is different. 

 

He’s waited a week—for one thing, he’s had quite enough of the same people for four days and he could use a break and some peace and quiet, and for another he’s not sure if he can face Fai, for reasons he doesn’t even entirely understand. He gets a few texts, none from Fai; he sees Syaoran for lessons and has a brief phone conversation with Tomoyo and her mother about lesson times for the fall, and that’s about it for his human contact. Then he decides that he needs to stop moping and face his fears, whatever those even are, and goes to the café.

 

The high school starts on the Thursday after Labor Day, so the kids are all back in school. A blue-haired girl he’s never seen before is working the second register; he can’t tell how old she is, but she obviously isn’t in school. Maybe she takes night classes at the community college.

 

He waves a hand to get Fai’s attention, but instead of his usual enthusiastic greeting, he just waves back distractedly after a long pause and goes back to whatever he’s doing. When Kurogane finally manages to get his full attention, he still looks distracted, eyes never fixing on a single point and certainly never on Kurogane’s face.

 

“Hey, there’s this martial arts demonstration at the college next weekend. Wanna go?” he asks, keeping his voice neutral and trying to pretend that everything is just as it has always been.

 

“Oh, next weekend? I—I’ve got something going on, I’m sorry.” He smiles briefly, but it’s not a real smile, not even one of his realistic fakes. Something has closed off in his face.

 

“All weekend.” Kurogane’s voice is flat. “Really.”

 

“Uh, yeah, a—wedding. Sorry, maybe some other time.”

 

“Right.” Kurogane leaves without another word, feeling oddly hollow.


	4. Chapter 4

A couple of nights later, he sees Fai at the bar. He almost goes over to talk to him when Yuuko appears and goes to sit next to Fai. He’s obviously been saving the seat for her, and they talk quietly, heads together. Kurogane quickly throws some cash down and leaves before he can see more.

 

He tries not to be hurt, tries not to feel anything at all, but even when his thoughts don’t betray him, his dreams do. Not sex dreams, oh no—these are much worse. Kurogane read somewhere that dreams are your subconscious’ way of working through your problems, and his subconscious really doesn’t know how to be subtle.

 

If it were just sex dreams, it’d be different. Sex dreams have nothing to do with anything—sometimes they don’t even have to do with actual attraction. Sure, he’s had one or two about Fai, but he’s also had them about various celebrities, fictional characters, random people he sees on the street, people he barely knows, characters completely invented by his brain, even that one really weird one with Yuuko that he tries not to think about. Sex dreams just pull whatever person your brain happens to be thinking about, matches them to a real physical sensation caused by excess blood flow, and put them into a situation. It’s no different from incorporating an alarm or a barking dog or something into your dream, or dreaming that, say, your arm has been cut off because you’ve lost circulation in your arm.

 

Unfortunately, there’s no logical way to interpret these dreams, to explain them into something manageable and painless, because they make one thing very clear: even when he consciously tries to stop thinking about Fai, his subconscious literally cannot stop.

 

They start fairly normally at first, sometimes a memory, and he thinks  _ oh, I just miss having a close friend _ and then something always happens. Something small, most times, that doesn’t feel out of place at the time, and in the dream he feels happy. And then he wakes up and thinks  _ what the hell was that _ . He and Fai, walking to the comic shop like they have many times before, only they’re holding hands. That night on the Ferris wheel, only they kiss. An arm around the shoulder or the waist, a kiss on the cheek, a hug. They just keep piling up, the tiny little details, each one a tiny sliver of metal digging into him.

 

Then it gets worse. There are multiple dreams every night now. Fai coming home to their shared apartment, making dinner, a hug from behind and “how was work?” Cuddling (!) on the couch watching a movie. An “I love you” on the phone. One night he stays up too late, glued to an 80s movie marathon on TV for no particular reason other than that he doesn’t want to move or think, and dreams himself and Fai into  _ Grease _ . Another night it’s some kind of weird alternate universe where they’re fighting side by side. Syaoran is there too, for some reason, and oddly enough when Kurogane wakes up he doesn’t think any of them were speaking English or even Japanese, but some kind of incomprehensible language he’s never heard before.

 

That “I love you” on the phone is what kills him, because up until now he’s been avoiding that word like the plague. Touya’s words echo in his head, from what seems like forever ago— _ It’s kind of awful to be in love with your best friend and not know whether to say anything…. _ But he does know, doesn’t he? And he’s not even sure that Fai  _ is  _ his best friend, not any more.

 

Halloween comes and goes. Kurogane wears the Batman costume, because he can. Sakura is a cat, Syaoran goes the really lame sheet ghost route, and someone somehow convinces Doumeki to be Robin Hood, which is hilarious (although Kimihiro absolutely refuses to be Maid Marian and is instead W.B. Yeats, probably mostly because he wants an excuse to wear a cravat). Tomoyo makes herself an elaborate cosplay of Homura from Puella Magi Madoka Magica but obviously didn't have time to do a matching Madoka for Sakura. Himawari goes as her name, a sunflower, which is cute, and Ryuu-ou pretty much goes as his—a dragon. Chiharu and Yamazaki go the angel/demon route, Chiharu as the demon. All of them trick-or-treat at his apartment, of course.

 

Fai and Yuuko do, too, which is kind of jarring. Not together, which helps a little, maybe. Yuuko is a perfect Cleopatra who shows up with two almost identical pink-haired kids, takes nearly half his candy and invites him to a party at the comic shop later, which he tentatively accepts. Fai comes with the rest of the group, saying cheerfully that he’s been designated chaperone and wanted an excuse to wear a costume anyway. He’s gone all out as a classic vampire, all swishy cape and cravat and waistcoat. He has the teeth, of course, but instead of trying to do Dracula hair he just has it in a low ponytail. He’s grown it out a little and it suits the vampire look somehow, although it really shouldn’t. He’s even got a stupid bat pin on his tie. At least he isn’t Robin, which would somehow be even worse. Kurogane can’t look him in the eye.

 

He doesn’t go to the party, knowing Fai will almost definitely be there. He still sees Fai, of course—he goes to the café sometimes to see the kids, after school hours when he knows they’ll be there. Fai is a part of the conversation and all, but they never really see each other alone. Sometimes they end up at the comic shop at the same time on a Wednesday and Fai acts like nothing is wrong and he’s just run into an old acquaintance, which is almost the worst thing he could do. 

 

At least he knows there’s nothing going on between Fai and Yuuko—nothing romantic, anyway, although Yuuko seems to have become his replacement friend. One day he just cracks and asks Yuuko, and she laughs for a full two minutes.

 

“Oh my god, no, not at all,” she says eventually, still laughing a little and wiping a tear from her eye. “I’m not exactly the dating type. I’m just good at giving advice, that’s all.”

 

“Advice about what?” Kurogane asks before his mouth can catch up with his brain.

 

“Ohhh, no. Doctor-patient confidentiality and all that. It’s between him and me. Or is it he and I? I can never remember.” Yuuko winks at him. “Anyway, why’d you want to know? Jealous?” She smirks, a little predatory.

 

“No, of course not!” he says a little too quickly. She scrutinizes him for a few seconds, then turns away, lifting a hand in a “whatever” sort of gesture.

 

“I don’t believe you, but I guess it’s none of my business.” This is so different from the usual Yuuko that Kurogane wonders for a second if she’s swapped bodies with someone considerably less nosy. Then he realizes that it’s a ploy and she’s just waiting for him to call her back and tell her everything, which makes  _ so  _ much more sense.

 

“I’m not gonna confess all to you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he says to her back. She turns around slowly and dramatically—definitely still Yuuko, good—and raises an eyebrow.

 

“I’m serious. I’m not telling you anything.” The more she stares at him like that, the more he  _ wants _ to just get it over with and tell her everything, but she doesn’t have to know that.

 

“I could help you, you know,” she says, leaning over the counter and sweeping her hair into an artful arrangement. “There would be a price, of course, but everything has a price.”

 

“What kind of price?” He’s intrigued despite himself, although he has no clue what she’s claiming to sell. Information, probably.

 

“Oh, that depends on what you’re looking for. What are you looking for, Youou Kurogane?” She elongates the syllables of his name, emphasizing each one, and then produces a pipe from seemingly nowhere and takes a long drag from it.

 

He jumps a little at hearing his full name. He hasn’t heard it spoken in so long that it’s started to feel almost like it belongs to someone else.

 

“Names are a very powerful thing,” Yuuko continues calmly. He doesn’t really care about her mystical mumbo-jumbo, he just cares about where she  _ learned _ his first name, which he rarely uses and doesn’t really give out. Sure, it’s on paperwork, and job applications, and his credit card—

 

His credit card. She wants him to think she’s pulled this crap out of thin air, but he’s paid by card here more than once, and she must have seen it.

 

“Yeah, so powerful that you can read them on little pieces of plastic when you ring someone up,” he interjects as she blabs on about the power of names.

 

She pauses and smiles slowly, taking another drag from her pipe. “Oh, but your name is not the only one that is hidden from most,” she says, continuing to talk like a goddamn sideshow fortuneteller. “You seem to have come to a crossroads,” she continues, making it even worse.

 

“What, are you gonna tell my fortune now? Am I gonna meet a tall dark stranger, is that it? It’s too early for this crap. Halloween isn’t until next week.” He rolls his eyes.

 

She laughs. “I am  _ trying _ to give you a  _ hint _ , dumbass,” she says in something much closer to a normal-sounding voice. “Although I can read the cards for you, if you want. I have a feeling you won’t listen to anything they say.”

 

“The ca—don’t tell me  _ that’s  _ what you do in that back room of yours,” he says, eyes widening.

 

“Oh, yes! What did you think it was, drugs? A sex shop?”

 

Kurogane, who has indeed thought both those things, opens his mouth, then closes it again.

 

“You’re a. A fortune-teller?”

 

“Psychic, actually. I read cards, hold seances, that sort of thing. People come to me for help dealing with spirits and things. I do exorcisms. I don’t always tell people what they want to hear. Does that surprise you?” She smirks.

 

“No, not really, now that I think of it.” She’s certainly got the necessary flair for the dramatic. “So Kimihiro…. is…?”

 

“Oh, Watanuki’s got so much raw talent!” she says, referring to Kimihiro by his last name. He’s pretty sure it’s Syaoran’s mother’s maiden name? “He’s a real natural. I’m training him up. Doumeki helps with exorcisms sometimes, too.”

 

Exorcisms. Quiet, normal, snarky Doumeki does  _ exorcisms _ ?

 

“So Fai—he’s—” Kurogane doesn’t quite know how to finish this sentence.

 

“He’s consulted me, yes. And no, I will not tell you what about. So many problems, poor man,” she continues, contradicting herself immediately. “Such a classic Gemini….”

 

Is this supposed to mean something to Kurogane? It just sounds like another load of mystical crap. That star sign thing is ridiculous. His own birthday is in February and his personality is absolutely  _ nothing _ like a Pisces or whatever is supposed to be.

 

“You said you could help me, before. Was…  _ that, _ ” he gestures at the back room, “what you were talking about?”

 

She just smirks mysteriously again. He makes an angry “tch” noise and starts to walk out.

 

“If you think hard enough, you might come a little closer to figuring out his secret,” she calls after him. “I’ve given you plenty of hints! Actually, so has Miss Mihara, although she didn’t know it.”

 

He ignores her. She just wants more attention. Secrets and hints…. why can’t anyone just be  _ straightforward _ about things any more?

 

With a start, Kurogane comes back to the present. Thinking about Yuuko’s party, remembering that day last week… he’s been going over and over it in his head, but he still can’t figure out what the hell she was talking about. The way she talked about it, she’s basically handed him the answer to whatever Fai’s deep dark secret is on a silver platter, but nothing she’s saying makes any sense. Anyway, he doesn’t even know anyone named Mihara, or whatever it is she’s said.

 

As it turns out, he does, and that’s when things start to make sense. Tomoyo calls him the next day, excited, and tells him she’s finished the movie and wants him to be the first one to see it that wasn’t involved in it. She emails the file to him with a lot of exclamation points and tells him to watch it ASAP. He isn’t doing anything at the time, so he grabs his headphones and clicks play.

 

The camera pans along a street, presumably the one where Sakura and Tomoyo live, then zooms in on a house, through the window, and into the face of a sleeping Sakura. Suddenly a voice calls her to breakfast from downstairs, and she sits up abruptly, bumping her head into the camera lens (presumably this is on purpose).

 

“Oh no, I’ll be late!” she says, racing down the stairs and out the door with a piece of toast in her mouth. It’s like every shoujo anime opening ever.

 

Sakura’s voice narrates a pan out of her running figure. Apparently her character’s name is Hana Himeno, of all the ridiculous names, and she gives the audience her age, height, blood type and grade. He has to laugh, it’s just too perfect.

 

There’s a brief school sequence in which Tomoyo plays the best friend and Syaoran the Mysterious Exchange Student. Then it skips to the end of school, where some truly impressive visual effects take a glassy-eyed Sakura to a mysterious glowing monument that gives her some kind of flower-related magical girl powers. A cute mascot, which Kurogane recognizes as the little flying lion-bear-thing plushie Sakura and Tomoyo showed him a few months ago, announces that she is now “Flower Princess Warrior Hana!” The words appear onscreen as he says it and the opening credits roll over the transformation sequence, which is very well done, for something made by a bunch of fifteen-year-olds. The names go by at the bottom and he almost doesn’t pay attention until he catches one out of the corner of his eye that he’s almost sure has said “Mihara.”

 

_ Mihara _ . That was the name Yuuko said. He rewinds the movie and pauses it just at that moment.

 

CHIHARU MIHARA, the name reads, above TAKASHI YAMAZAKI. He never knew Chiharu’s last name, or Yamazaki’s first, for that matter. Then again, he’s pretty sure none of them know his first name.

 

He wants to drop everything and try to figure this thing out right away, now that he has a clue, at least. Yuuko’s cryptic crap has been driving him up the wall and he’s  _ itching _ to get it so he can go yell “Why didn’t you just  _ tell _ me?” at her. But this movie is very important to Tomoyo and Sakura, he reminds himself, and he decides that he’ll finish the movie first, figure this thing out later. 

 

He hits play, and the credits finish after a few more names. A newly transformed Sakura looks at her gloved hands, puzzled, then, straight into the camera, “Flower Princess Warrior Hana? Isn’t that a little redundant?”

 

“Huh?” the mascot says.

 

“Flower Princess Warrior… Flower?”

 

“Um. Good point. But you’re the one the princess’s power has chosen, and that’s her name! I am Keroberos,” the little lion-thing “says,” puffing itself up a little by means of some kind of clever VFX.

 

“That’s a mouthful… I’m just gonna call you Kero,” says Sakura. Hana. Whatever.

 

“And Mokona is Mokona,” says another squeaky voice, obviously provided by a slightly more high-pitched Tomoyo. The camera pans over to reveal another plushie, this one a white rabbit thing with big long ears and a red gem sewn onto its forehead. It reminds Kurogane of nothing so much as a large white bun.

 

“Oh, you’re both so cute!” she says, hugging them. They protest squeakily in voices that sound suspiciously Tomoyo-like.

 

The plot continues on. It is purposefully cliché-ridden and seems to be attempting to combine every single magical girl trope and poke fun at all of them, and Kurogane is thoroughly enjoying it. Sakura is a good little actress who sells her cute, bubbly character perfectly, and although Syaoran isn’t much of an actor, he doesn’t really need to be. He’s basically playing himself, but slightly more badass. Actually, everyone seems to be playing some kind of alternate version of themselves. Even Touya and Yukito show up, Touya as the overprotective older brother (gee) and Yukito as some dude who gets possessed by one of the bad guys and Touya helps to save, then subsequently falls for. It’s cute. They don’t have to act much, either. There are a couple of points where Kurogane wonders if someone has just secretly filmed Touya being his normal self.

 

Then the Beach Episode happens. Apparently, “Hana” and “Tsubasa” both end up going to the beach on the same day, and of course a monster attacks. (In the fictional town, the beach is just a short walk away.) Tomoyo has done a wonderful job with the dubbing, no matter what everyone else had to go through to get there, and the monster is a masterpiece of Claymation and robotics. “Tsubasa’s” water rescue is suitably dramatic and “Hana” defeats the monster with flower power or whatever. There are a few shots of Fun At The Beach in a home-movie-esque montage (he sees himself in some of the beach volleyball shots and gets very annoyed for a minute). Then they go on the Ferris wheel at night and talk about Feelings and have that kiss, which is really more of a peck. It’s very realistic, and he has a feeling there was very little acting required, especially for the awkwardness.

 

Eventually the movie comes to its dramatic conclusion. It turns out that Flower Princess Whatever is just being manipulated for her power and isn’t actually helping the good guys after all, a la Madoka. She gives up the power, incinerates some Real Bad Guys in a shot that must have taken a hell of a lot of work, and runs to help a prostrate Syaoran—sorry, “Tsubasa.” It ends happily ever after, until a post-credits scene where Tomoyo herself is offered the power by Surprise Not Dead bad guys. 

 

The credits roll over outtakes. Most of these are actual outtakes—Sakura flubbing her lines, Syaoran tripping, all of them collapsing into laughter—but a couple are discarded bits of film from the beach. One of these is a clip from the beach volleyball “scene,” when Tomoyo started filming it toward the end, of Syaoran trying to be sexy. Despite himself, Kurogane laughs at this. The next clip is from the other side of the net, filming Sakura’s reaction—obviously it couldn’t be used because it’s too shaky and you can hear Tomoyo’s laughter from behind the camera. Then she goes to face the net with the camera, wobbling all over the place and pointing the camera at the ground for a few seconds, and Kurogane sees himself and Fai from the side with a jolt of recognition.

 

There are two boxes playing outtakes by this point, and as this one fades out, another fades in. But there’s enough time before this one fades out for Kurogane to see himself take off his shirt and throw it at the camera, which it covers—he didn't realize he’d done that. And Fai—

 

Wait a second. He rewinds it and watches Fai instead of himself. Fai is about to serve, but his eyes widen and he nearly drops the ball, then barely manages to hit it and it sails off beyond the camera. He’s blushing a little.

 

“I’m an idiot,” he says out loud. “Oh my god, I am  _ such  _ a goddamn idiot.” And Tomoyo probably included this bit on purpose.

 

Everything he thought he could just explain away starts to unravel before his eyes. Because the way he’s been seeing the world, it was all his own fault. He got too close, or gave mixed signals, or whatever, and it made Fai uncomfortable so he backed off completely because he wasn’t interested. This is, at least, easier than leading him on, or whatever.

 

This is not what he’s seeing right now.

 

So if Fai at least likes him somewhat, likes him enough to be distracted by him that one time and enough to dance with him like that and maybe even enough to almost kiss him on the Ferris wheel, why did he back off?

 

And then he starts to really think about this secret thing, because maybe there’s something to it, maybe it’s the reason behind Fai’s decidedly weird behavior. Or maybe it has nothing to do with anything, but if Yuuko puts that much emphasis on something, it’s probably important. But for the life of him, he can’t figure out what Chiharu has said that could be a clue. Mostly he just remembers her yelling at Yamazaki.

 

When he wakes up the next morning, he remembers. He’s dreamed it, or something, and words have spent the whole night chasing each other around in his head.  _ Names  _ and  _ Gemini _ and then  _ What, does one of you have a secret twin I don't know about or something? _

 

He remembers Chiharu saying that at breakfast, the morning of the prank war. He’s never seen  _ The Parent Trap _ , didn't pay attention to what she was saying, but someone obviously did because Fai… 

 

Fai had dropped his juice glass and started choking on thin air.

 

He Googles “Gemini,” already knowing what it will be. Sure enough, it’s the Zodiac sign of the Twins. It also has a lot to do with duality, apparently, if you can believe that Zodiac crap. A Gemini often seems to have two different personalities, he reads skeptically. Bright, vivacious, blah blah… very changeable and seems to jump around from topic to topic inexplicably… “Well,  _ that’s _ true,” he says aloud. “Doesn’t mean there’s anything to this, though.” Then he feels like an idiot for talking to thin air.

 

The only other thing that Yuuko has said that seems clue-like is the thing about names. “You’re not the only one whose name is hidden” or some melodramatic crap like that. He’s pretty sure the “You are at a crossroads” thing was just to annoy him.

 

Okay, so Fai has a twin he doesn’t talk about and he’s using an alias? How does  _ that _ help anything?

 

Not knowing what else to do, he goes to talk to Yuuko again, this time with more information on his side. He’s not even sure any more why he’s doing this, but he has to do  _ something _ . He has to know the truth, whatever that even means any more.

 

“All right, I got the damn hints, now what?” he says, slamming his fist down on the counter at the comic store. 

 

“Oh,  _ very  _ good!” Yuuko says. She sounds like the excited parent of a baby who has just said his first word, or maybe a dog owner whose puppy has just learned to heel. “Took you long enough.”

 

“I want information,” Kurogane says curtly. “Whatever you’ve got. I want to understand.”

 

“There is a price,” Yuuko informs him.

 

“Sure, yeah, whatever. How much d’you want?” He pulls out his wallet.

 

“Hmm, how about your tattoo?” She smirks at him as he gapes. “Or perhaps all your memories of sunny days, or the sight in your right eye? I do so love that one.”

 

“Yuuko. Stop trying to be so goddamn melodramatic and just tell me what it’s gonna cost me,” he says. He is one second away from slamming her head very hard into the nearest wall.

 

“Your left arm?” she continues, unperturbed. “A family heirloom? It has to be something important to you.”

 

He starts to tell her he can just owe her a favor, and he gets as far as “Or I could just—” before he realizes that owing Yuuko Ichihara a favor, or, in fact, anything at all, is quite possibly the worst idea in the entire world and bites off the end of the sentence.

 

“Just….?” She probably knows exactly what he was about to say.

 

“Just—pay cash,” he says quickly.

 

“Oh, no, I don’t take cash for this type of transaction.” She is insisting on being incredibly frustrating on purpose, he knows she is. “What about that?” She points at his dragon ear wrap, which he is wearing again today for some reason, he’s not even sure why.

 

“Yeah, fine, although I don’t know why you’d want it,” he says, taking it out and handing it to her.

 

“This is an acceptable price,” she says, making her voice all hollow and spooky-sounding. He almost thinks he sees her hair pouf out in an intangible wind, but he’s sure she’s hiding a fan under the counter or something.

 

“Riiiiight,” he says, rolling his eyes.

 

“You may ask one question,” she says, still in full-on Spooky Mode.

 

“One, are you kidding me? You probably know tons of shit you aren’t telling me and all you give me is one goddamn question?!”

 

“That is what has been paid for” is all she will say, irritatingly. “Make sure it is the right question, Youou Kurogane.” Spooky Mode Yuuko seems to be allergic to contractions.

 

“Do you  _ have _ to be so goddamn cryptic all the time?” he mutters, half to himself.

 

“Is that your question, Youou Kurogane?” What, has she turned into a robot or something?

 

“I know my own name, stop saying it! And no, it’s not my damn question!”

 

What  _ is _ his question? There are too many things he wants to know and one question cannot possibly encompass them all. Oh great, now  _ he’s _ doing the contraction thing.

 

“Your question?” Yuuko prompts again.

 

With all the obsessive pointing out of names she’s been doing, Yuuko seems to be prompting him to ask about them. All that crap about names last week, now this…

 

“What is Fai’s real name?” he asks. God, he really  _ is _ picking up on the contraction thing.

 

It seems to be the right thing to say, because Yuuko nods approvingly. “Very good, Youou Kurogane.” She is  _ so obsessed with names _ . “The name that he was given at birth is Yuui Valerian.”

 

“I don’t know how that’s supposed to help me, but thank you.” Kurogane moves to leave, but Yuuko catches his arm.

 

“Names have great power,” she tells him, a serious look on her face. “Be careful how you use this one, for it is especially powerful. It could lead to tragedy.”

 

“Yeah, sure, thanks,” he mutters, shaking off her arm and walking out. Isn’t that spooky attitude of hers offputting to customers? Maybe people like the vague melodrama stuff, although he can’t imagine what people. Fai, probably. Er—Yuui?

 

He goes back to his apartment and just lies on his back on the couch and thinks for a while. He has facts, but no reasons. Why doesn’t Fai talk about his twin, and where is he? Why doesn’t  _ Yuui _ use his real name, and where does his current name come from? There are a lot of reasons to hide a name.

 

Kurogane’s own first name is not purposefully hidden, exactly, so much as…. not preferred. His parents were the only ones who really called him by his first name in his childhood—at his school, most people only used last names, and anyway a lot of people found his first name unpronounceable because of all the vowels and defaulted to last name only. Most people called his dad by his last name, too, and after his dad’s death Kurogane had just started introducing himself that way, both because it was easier and because he felt it was one last link to his father. Younger, punk-phase him also thought it just sounded more badass.

 

He’d always thought that “Flourite” sounded like an alias—no one has that actual last name, he’s thought often, but usually he just thinks  _ nah, but it’s  _ Fai,  _ anything goes with him _ . Now it turns out that he’s been right all along, although “Valerian” actually doesn’t sound that much better. Why the alliteration? Why the middle initial? Why is he even thinking about this? It’s just a  _ name _ , he tells himself, and goes to bed.

 

He wakes up the next morning feeling reckless. He’s just going to go and talk to Fai. He’s going to confront the idiot and find out the truth and hopefully it will at least give him some closure, if it ends up completely destroying their relationship like he’s kind of afraid it will. What’s left to destroy? he asks himself, and walks over to the café before he can change his mind. It’s only seven and the place doesn’t open until seven thirty, but he knows perfectly well that Fai will be there. He has to be.

 

He still has the key that Fai gave him back in August, although he’s rarely needed to use it. He uses it now to let himself in through the back. He’s starting to have second thoughts, but he pushes them back. He’s going to do this  _ now _ , before he loses his resolve.

 

Fai isn’t out front, so he must be in the stockroom. His keys are sitting on the front counter and his coat is on the hook behind the smoothie machines, so he’s definitely here. Kurogane feels a strange kind of calm, and it takes him a second to recognize it as the calm he feels when he’s fighting. Because yes, at this point, this is basically a war, and this encounter could either lead to a cease-fire or, well, all hell breaking loose. Up till now it’s been a cold war, but he’s making his first foray into enemy territory.

 

Before he can think about whether this is  _ really _ a good idea, he goes into the stockroom, which is so crowded with stuff that he can’t tell if anyone is even in there, and says loudly into the forest of shelves, “Fai, we need to talk. Or should I say  _ Yuui _ ?” This part sort of escapes his mouth without his meaning it to, and he winces a little. It sounds angrier than he’s meant it to. It also gets a reaction, because he hears a clattering noise and a few seconds later Fai appears from behind a row of shelves, his pale face even paler than usual.

 

“Where did you hear that name?” he says, sounding frantic and more than a little choked up. He sounds like he can barely get the words out.

 

“I—” What is he supposed to say? Yuuko sold it to me for a dragon earring? “I, uh—”

 

“Get out.” Fai’s face is frighteningly calm, and then it twists into something darker and he screams “Get _ out! _ ”, slamming his fist down on the shelves behind him. There is a soft thump and then a harder-sounding noise, probably a box or two falling off. Kurogane has never seen him like this and it scares him, but he doesn’t move.

 

“We need to talk,” he repeats instead, calmly. It feels almost like he and Fai have flipped personalities, gone to opposite ends of the spectrum.

 

Fai’s face looks more desperate than angry. He’s scared, but of what Kurogane doesn’t know.

 

“I thought I’d never hear that name again,” he says quietly. 

 

“Why did you change it?” Kurogane asks, equally quietly. Neither has moved from their positions.

 

“You—you don’t know?” Fai looks incredibly vulnerable all of a sudden, like a child.

 

“I know you have a twin, but I don’t know anything else. I was… hoping you could tell me.”

 

“Had,” Fai corrects him, and then suddenly he’s crying. Usually he’s so in control of his emotions that this must be all of them, pent up, just waiting to be let out. Kurogane hugs him, because it seems like the right thing to do.

 

Eventually he calms down enough to talk. “Yuuko’s the only one who knows any of this,” he says into Kurogane’s shoulder. “I—I never told anyone. Yuuko only knows because she—” He stops abruptly.

 

“Start from the beginning,” Kurogane prompts him, tentatively reaching up a hand to pat his hair. He’s stopped crying as abruptly as he’d started, but he still looks scared and upset and he’s clinging to Kurogane for dear life.

 

“I—you probably already know this, but my birth name is Yuui Valerian.” He has an odd look on his face as he says this. It’s probably the first time in a very long time that he  _ has _ said it. “My parents died when I was very young. At least I think they did. We were in the system for as long as we could remember, me and—Fai.” He almost mumbles this last word, and Kurogane’s eyes widen when he recognizes what it means. “The, the director of the orphanage we were at hated us. She’d tell us that our parents gave us up because they didn’t want us, that it was because we were twins and twins were unlucky. She probably hated twins because it was much harder to get families to consider them—either we were a package deal, or one of us had to go alone, and we absolutely refused to go anywhere without each other. We were in the orphanage most of the time because it was so hard to find families to take us, but sometimes we went to foster families. They were always awful—they just wanted us for the benefits and didn’t care about us at all. One was nice, and they almost adopted us, but then the wife got pregnant and they couldn’t afford to care for all of the kids. We always felt like everything that went wrong was all our fault, for being twins. We felt guilty to have been born, like we were cursed.” There’s a distant, awful look on his face, and Kurogane hugs him tighter.

 

“Eventually we felt so trapped that we’d do anything to get out,” he continues. “The orphanage was basically a prison. We never got to leave except to go to a foster family, and even those rarely came along any more. We felt like we’d been there for a hundred years.” Kurogane notices how much he uses the plural. He’s heard that twins are connected in all kinds of weird ways, but he’s never really believed it until now. “Then this guy Mr. King shows up out of the blue and says he wants to adopt one of us. Just one. He can only afford to take care of one, but whichever one of us it is will get a good education and he’ll do his best to be a good father, blah blah blah. He seemed nice enough, there were no outward signs that he was awful like the others, and we were so desperate that we’d do anything.”

 

He takes a deep breath. “He asked each of us separately. He told us he could only take one and asked us to choose which one. I never knew what Fai chose, but I was incredibly selfish and chose myself.”

 

Kurogane wants to say something, anything, to make him feel less awful about this, but he has a feeling he’ll only make it worse, so he keeps his mouth shut. There’s a strange feeling in his chest.

 

“I went with him,” Fai— _ Yuui— _ continues quietly. “Fai stayed behind. A few hours later, I got this awful feeling like part of me had been ripped away, and I knew he was dead.”

 

Every part of Kurogane’s rational brain wants to say that this is impossible, that there must be some mistake, but Fai continues inexorably. “I was notified a week later, as the only next of kin. There was some kind of accident, or something. They never told me the details. I didn’t even get to go to his funeral.”

 

Kurogane looks down at him, expecting him to be on the verge of tears, but he’s still got that awfully calm look on his face, his eyes like someone who has lived through torture.

 

“It was my fault, for leaving him.” This is obviously not true, but before Kurogane can try to convince him of this, he just keeps talking. “I took on his name after I knew he was gone, so that at least a small part of him could continue to live in the world. Anyway, I deserved to be reminded of what I had done.”

 

_ You don’t deserve any of this _ , Kurogane wants to tell him, but he can’t bring himself to speak. This is worse than anything he could have imagined, and he’s beginning to understand full well why Fai might be afraid of intimacy, or maybe afraid to replace his twin by becoming that close to someone else.

 

“Mr. King let me choose my own name. Flourite for the stone. The D doesn't stand for anything, I just thought that people had middle initials so I should give myself one and I liked the way it sounded.” Kurogane has a feeling there’s more to the flourite thing, but he’s not about to ask.

 

“Of course, Mr. King turned out to be just like the others,” he continues, and Kurogane winces. It gets  _ worse? _ “Well, not  _ just _ like. He was very kind to me, he taught me a lot, and he tried very hard to be a good father. It’s just that he was also a murderer.”

 

….Kurogane would not believe that this was real life if Fai didn’t look so serious and upset. He really  _ does _ seem to have the worst possible luck.

 

“Um, what?” Kurogane says, trying very hard not to sound skeptical.

 

“Yeah, I caught him hiding a body when I was eighteen,” Fai says, almost matter-of-factly. “I was really upset, of course. I think he wanted me to catch him. Actually, he wanted me to kill him, but I couldn’t, I ran away. I… I gave the police a tip. I think he’s in jail. I  _ hope _ he is, although I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I just didn’t know what else to do.” There’s a faraway look in his eyes. He looks…. broken. He still hasn’t let go of Kurogane, and somehow Kurogane finds he doesn’t mind. He fights the urge to kiss the top of Fai’s head and settles for smoothing his hair.

 

“I wandered around for a while. Ended up going to college. I learned everything I could about folklore, hoping there was something in it that could bring Fai back to me. That’s how I got here, you know.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Yuuko. I tracked her down. She’s considered one of the best psychics in the States, but she’s very elusive. I, uh, consulted her.” He doesn’t elaborate on this, but Kurogane can guess what he means. Suddenly his inexplicable knowledge of Latin and runes doesn’t seem so inexplicable.

 

“Ohhhh, no, it’s probably seven thirty already,” he says suddenly, finally breaking the hug and grabbing for his phone. “No no no—where’s Sakura?”

 

“Sakura? Doesn’t she have school?”

 

“She was here earlier, she stopped by before school to help out with the new shipment. Sakura?” he calls, ducking around a corner to look for her. Then suddenly he’s backing away, an awful expression on his face, even more awful than the whole parade of expressions he’s been making through this whole awful confession, and something is very very wrong.

 

Kurogane doesn’t need to be told to go and look. Sakura is there, crumpled into a heap on the floor. She’s breathing, but she isn’t moving. A box and a tipped-over stepladder complete the tableau. He shakes her, slaps her face, but she won’t wake up. Is it just the way her hair has fallen or is there a bump on her head?

 

Fai is just standing there, frozen. “I did this,” he says quietly. “Another person—I—” And before Kurogane can tell him that it isn’t his fault, of course not, he’s backed out the door and run away. 

 

The door slams shut with a loud clamor of bells, and Kurogane can’t go after him, he can’t, he has to deal with the situation at hand. So he puts it all out of his mind and deals with it.

 

xXx

 

Kurogane hates hospitals. There are too many bad memories associated with them, with the too-clean smell and the bare, sterile walls and the blue and white everywhere. Blue scrubs, white coats, patients in blue nightgowns, institutional white sheets. Every time he sees one of those stupid empty beds he half-sees the ghost of his mother, every time he passes by the ER he remembers the awful hollow feeling when he got there too late to say goodbye to his father. A hospital is probably the last place he wants to be right now, or ever, but he has to be there for Sakura.

 

He’s called her dad, of course, and texted Tomoyo and Syaoran, who are in school, or should be. He has a feeling they’ll both skip. But they all have to get there from somewhere else, tell people where they’re going, and he has to sit in the ER filling out forms he doesn’t know how to answer. Luckily he doesn’t have to wait long for someone to come and get her—her injury obviously trumps everyone else in the room, which is populated by a handful of broken limbs and one guy who seems to have cut himself somehow (at seven in the morning?). He tells them that he’s a friend, that he’d been there when it happened, that her father will be there as soon as he can get off work, and watches helplessly as they try to wake her up.

 

They can’t figure out why, but she seems to have gone into some sort of coma. He tells them as best he can how she was hurt, although he doesn’t even really know. They think it has something to do with her earlier accident—apparently she’d fallen out of a tree and landed really badly. They start to tell him the details, but he doesn’t want to know. He’s in enough secondhand pain right now. The worst is that there doesn’t seem to be anything anyone can do. Again. He has to go through this  _ again. _

 

Her dad shows up a few minutes later. He’s worried sick, of course, and keeps pacing up and down the room. He doesn’t blame Kurogane or Fai, though—“it was just an accident, like what happened before,” he says. “She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

 

_ “He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the doctors tell a twelve-year-old Kurogane. “He was caught in the crossfire. They didn’t mean to shoot him.” They won’t let him see the body. _

 

Kurogane winces and tries to banish the memory, but when he looks at Sakura all he can see is his mother lying there motionless and pale. There’s nothing he can do, and he wants to scream, to run away like Fai did.

 

Syaoran and Tomoyo rush in one after another. They’ve made some excuse to skip school, no one much cares what, and they both stare at Sakura with identical agonized expressions on their faces.

 

Kurogane tells the story again. It gets harder every time he has to say it, because every time he feels more guilty, like he could have done something to stop it.

 

“It wasn’t your fault  _ or _ Fai’s,” Tomoyo tells him fiercely, and Syaoran nods.

 

“Try telling that to Fai,” Kurogane says ruefully. “He was already upset enough when it happened…”

 

“Why?” Tomoyo asks with some of her usual curiosity.

 

“I, uh—I kind of made him bring up some bad memories.”

 

“Where did he go?” Syaoran asks, still staring at Sakura.

 

“No idea. Away, I guess. He couldn’t handle it.” Kurogane stares at the ground. He doesn’t want to talk about this any more.

 

Mr. Kinomoto has gone outside to call Touya. Syaoran and Tomoyo each take one of Sakura’s hands and sit with her for a while. Kurogane is starting to feel claustrophobic, so he mumbles something about calling in sick to work and heads outside, too. When he glances back, Syaoran and Tomoyo are hugging. One or both of them is sobbing a little.

 

He does actually call in sick to work, although he doesn’t need to be in for a few hours and he only has one class today. Then, without quite knowing why, he calls Yuuko.

 

“I warned you about that name,” Yuuko says when she picks up. “Accidents can happen that way…”

 

“Wha—did Kimihiro tell you?” Kurogane isn’t even sure if she’s talking about what he thinks she is.

 

“Watanuki hasn’t been in today. He hasn’t even seen Syaoran. Sakura will be all right,” she says, and he feels a bit of a chill despite himself. She has to be lying. How the hell else would she know?

 

“Don’t give me any of that psychic crap. I know the outlook isn’t great,” he spits at her. He’s so angry at the world for hurting Sakura, who hasn’t done anything to hurt anyone, and he has to take it out on someone or he’ll burst. “I don't even know why the fuck I bothered calling you. I thought you’d like to know, I guess.”

 

“Things tend to turn out all right in the end,” and there she goes again with that vague psychic talk, “and everything happens for a reason—”

 

He hangs up on her.

 

When he turns around, Tomoyo is standing there, looking stronger than Kurogane feels. She’s always been strong.

 

“You should go after him,” she says.

 

“W-what? Why should I—Sakura needs me here!”

 

“Sakura has me and Syaoran and her dad. I know that you and Fai love her just as much as we do, in a different way, and that’s why you should go.” She seems more like an ancient priestess than his Tomoyo at this moment.

 

“But—I—”

 

“If you truly love him, you have to go, now, before it’s too late.”

 

“….Thank you,” he says finally. In most situations he would have protested, told her she was seeing things, but right now things are happening that are too important to deny. He has to admit that he’d also much rather be anywhere but this hospital, but how will he even find Fai if he doesn’t want to be found? It’s eight fifteen and he could be anywhere.

 

He goes to Fai’s apartment first. It’s empty. He picks the lock and checks, but Fai is gone and so is all his stuff—well, all the stuff that he can possibly bring with him. The car is gone, too. Where would he take the car? Where did he  _ get _ the car?

 

His first thought would probably be to get out of town, and then as far away as possible. He’s probably running away completely, never planning to come back here, because he’s afraid that his presence is a curse. Kurogane remembers Himawari and her bad luck—Fai must be feeling the same way. So which way would he go?

 

There’s an airport a few towns over, north of here. It would take probably thirty-five minutes to get there. For someone who wants to get as far away as possible, it seems like a likely place. Maybe he’ll just give up on the car, or maybe it was a rental to begin with. Kurogane hasn’t got any better ideas, so he gets on his bike and heads to the airport.

 

He doesn’t bother to try texting or calling Fai. He won’t answer. The state he was in when he left, he might well have thrown his phone out the window or something. 

 

On the way there, his brain frantically tries to calculate how long it would take to get a plane ticket, how long before a plane left, how long it would take to search an entire airport… He doesn’t even know what  _ airline _ . He doesn’t even know if he’s in the right place. Fai could be on the highway by now.

 

But he isn’t. Somehow, miraculously, Kurogane finds his car in the parking garage.

 

By some incredible luck, levels one through four are all full, and Kurogane has to take his bike up to level five. He doesn’t see anything on the way up, but when he turns in to level five there are only three cars there. One is a red SUV, one is a black sedan, and one is a blue VW Beetle.

 

He almost misses it, but when he walks out he glances at it, thinks  _ Huh, that looks a lot like—,  _ turns back around, checks the license plate, and almost starts believing all of Yuuko’s crap because  _ this shit does not happen. _

 

Feeling a bit like Inigo Montoya, he picks a random terminal, whispering “Guide my sword” under his breath then immediately rolling his eyes at his own stupidity. “Go Your Own Way” is playing when he walks in.  _ This could be the climax of a thousand romcoms, _ he thinks, then  _ what the  _ hell  _ am I doing here? _

 

In romcoms (which he does  _ not _ admit to having watched, ever, this is just… osmosis) it always seems so easy. Character A is about to get on a plane! Character B somehow gets through security and finds exactly where A is in a gigantic airport in the nick of time! There is a Dramatic Scene! Character A decides not to leave! Or, sometimes, Character B gets on a different plane going the same place and somehow manages to find Character A in a different airport! But airports are huge and timing is weird and by the time he looks everywhere, Fai will probably be gone forever.

 

He doesn’t even have to get as far as security. Fai is standing near the rows of kiosks, looking lost. It’s so incredibly easy that Kurogane worries for a minute that he’s only dreaming this or something, but no, that’s really him, with the silvery suitcase he brought to the beach and another, bigger one.

 

The piped-in music starts playing something sappy and romantic the second they make eye contact. He glares at the ceiling and tells it to shut up. “If this is somehow all Yuuko’s doing, I swear…” he mutters under his breath.

 

Fai doesn’t notice. He looks like he’s seen a ghost, but also the tiniest bit relieved, as if he had been secretly hoping this would happen.

 

“What are you doing here?” he says. It almost sounds robotic, like he’s saying what he’s Supposed To Say.

 

“Can we skip the recycled romcom dialogue? I came to stop you from making a snap decision that you’d probably regret for the rest of your life. Also, I didn’t want you to leave,” he says with some difficulty.

 

“Is Sakura—” He doesn’t seem to know how to finish the sentence.

 

“She’ll be all right,” he lies. Or maybe it isn’t a lie. Maybe Yuuko was right. “Anyway, it wasn’t your fault.”

 

“Of course it was! All I ever seem to do is hurt the people I love!”

 

“Or they hurt you.”

 

He nods mutely.

 

“Look, what happened to Sakura was an accident. You didn’t put her there, and you didn’t purposely drop that box on her head. You don’t even know exactly what  _ did  _ happen. It’s idiotic to blame yourself for something like that. His death wasn’t your fault either,” he continues before Fai can argue with him. “But probably nothing I say will ever convince you of that, so I’ll just say that I forgive you, and he would too.”

 

“But—I—I’m selfish and a coward and—”

 

“ _ I don’t care. _ Okay? And you know what? Even though you think you’re being a coward and selfish for running away like this, I think it was actually very brave of you, in a way.”

 

Fai just stares at him, an unreadable expression on his face.

 

“You’re leaving the people that you care about, even though that hurts you, because you want them to be safe more than you want yourself to be happy. That sounds pretty brave and selfless to me. But it’s not  _ necessary _ , because you’re taking on all this damn responsibility that isn’t yours to take! Only an idiot like you would think he’s so goddamn important that all the bad things in the world revolve around him.” Kurogane can’t look at him any more. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. It’s probably just making things worse, he’s probably—he’s—

 

He’s laughing.

 

It’s a strained sort of laughter, but it’s there, and he’s got his emotions under control again.

 

“Kuro-tan, only you would try to make someone feel better by calling them an idiot.” It's the first time in a while that he’s used one of his stupid nicknames, and Kurogane has missed hearing them so much, annoying as they are. “But you’re right, I am one.” He sounds… bitter. Not a good sign.

 

He isn’t getting it, is he? “You have to realize that you’re important to people!” Kurogane almost shouts at him.  _ Me! You’re important to me!  _ “No one wanted you to leave!”

 

“…really?” Why the hell doesn’t he believe that?

 

“Of course not!  _ No one blames you. _ ”

 

“ _ I  _ blame me,” he says quietly. “Anyway, isn’t there that saying—if you love someone, you should let them go?”

 

“That saying is bullshit. Also, it doesn’t apply. Wait, what are you—saying?” He’s not talking about this, is he? He’s talking about earlier. He actually thinks that—

 

“You actually think that you’re that dangerous? Or that you’re—what. Help me out here.” He’d better be right about this, but he’s going to keep talking in circles just in case.

 

“Too dangerous. Too much work. Not what you thought I was.” He stares at the ground.

 

“No, no, that’s not it, is it? It’s that you don’t think you deserve to be  _ happy,  _ and you’re punishing yourself. Isn’t it?”

 

He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t protest, either.

 

“Look, I’m gonna spell this out for you. You can be  _ incredibly _ frustrating and very very annoying, but you deserve to be happy, and he would want you to be. Also, you can have as many goddamn issues as you want, I don’t care. I’ve got plenty of my own. I—” He doesn’t even know how his brain has convinced his mouth to say these words, but they seem to be spilling out no matter what he does—“I just want to be with you,” he almost mumbles. This really  _ is  _ turning into a romcom, and it’s really, really annoying.

 

Fai looks at him for what seems like an eternity, his face conflicted, and then something changes in his expression and he says abruptly, “Let’s go home.”

 

“Okay?” Kurogane doesn’t quite get what’s going on, but Fai seems to have come to a decision, at least. He’s doing this all wrong, but at least something seems to be working. Feelings have never been his strong point, especially not actually  _ expressing _ them, but then again, Fai seems to have some difficulty with actually  _ having  _ them.  _ What a pair we make _ , he thinks.  _ Couple of lonely, emotionally constipated idiots with guilt complexes. I guess it makes sense, in a way. _

 

They take Fai’s car back to the hospital with Kurogane’s bike in the back. Neither of them says anything the whole way, but something has changed between them, and for the first time it feels like everything might turn out all right. Aaand there his brain goes again with the sappy cliches—what is this, a damn  _ romance novel _ ?

 

No one notices when they walk into Sakura’s hospital room. They’re too busy watching as her eyes flutter open and she says “Syaoran?” and then everyone is hugging each other and Syaoran is hugging Sakura and without quite noticing it, Kurogane and Fai are holding hands.

 

“Oh my god,  _ Syaoran _ !” Sakura says in wonderment, and everyone goes quiet. “Why didn’t I remember—you look so much older!”

 

Barely daring to speak, Syaoran asks, “Do you—remember me?”

 

“Of course I do! We met when I was ten. You gave me an apple and ran away. You moved away, I never thought I’d see you again—Syaoran, why are you crying?”

 

It turns out that all Sakura’s memory needed was another bump on the head, and all she needed to wake up was for Syaoran to talk her out of it.

 

“I heard his voice,” she tells them later. “He was telling me all these things, and I remembered, and I remembered how much I—care about him—” She’s blushing. “And t-then he kissed me and I had to tell him and I made myself wake up.” Apparently  _ everyone _ is in romance novel mode today.

 

She seems perfectly fine now, but the doctors keep her for observation for a couple of days and run a bunch of tests. She’s perfectly optimistic through the whole thing and cheers up all the other patients, of course. She wouldn’t be Sakura if she didn’t.

 

Kurogane keeps Fai under observation, too. Fai shuts down the café for a little while due to “family emergency,” which is pretty close to the truth, really, and takes some time to figure things out. Kurogane has already had plenty of time to figure things out, but he gets that Fai needs to be alone for a while. He does not, however, let him be alone for more than a few hours at a time, because if Fai is away from people for too long he starts to get all weird and depressed and that is really not what he needs right now. So he always quietly makes sure that someone knocks on the door with food, or an invitation somewhere, or some other excuse, and stays out of it otherwise. He sends Syaoran over to ask for help translating a difficult piece of Latin, or Tomoyo to take him shopping, or has Sakura ask him to visit her.

 

It only takes a few days. On the fifth (not that he’s been counting), when Sakura has been released from the hospital and is pronounced completely healthy, there’s a knock on his door at six thirty, and when he opens it Fai is on the other side, smiling at him. It’s a real smile, this time. 

 

“I came by to tell you that we’ve been invited to Thanksgiving dinner at the Kinomotos’,” he says. It’s not what Kurogane expected him to say, but then again he’s not really sure  _ what _ he’s expecting. He’s never really done this before, whatever  _ this _ is.

 

“Do you, uh… want to come in?” Kurogane makes a vague hand gesture to illustrate this, then immediately regrets having done so.

 

“Oh, sure!” Fai steps inside, closing the door, and immediately pulls off his scarf and coat and tosses them on the coat rack as if they belong there, still talking. “I said yes for both of us ‘cause I figured you wouldn’t have any other plans. Tomoyo and Syaoran are coming too, of course, and Touya and Yukito will be home from college. Oh, and I think Tomoyo’s mom is coming, I’m not sure if there are any other relatives or anything. Oh! But won’t it be hard, with Syaoran’s whole family, too? I wonder how they'll deal with that…”

 

“You’re babbling,” Kurogane tells him firmly.

 

“Am I? Oh, sorry! Want to watch something?”

 

This is a total non sequitur, but Kurogane just nods and gives up trying to understand what’s going on in that idiot’s head.

 

Instead of going over to the couch, Fai goes into the kitchen for some reason and starts messing around with pots and pans. He’s carrying a grocery bag, Kurogane notices suddenly, and what the hell is he doing?

 

“I brought stuff for dinner,” he calls over his shoulder. “How’s spaghetti and meatballs? I know it’s simple, but I figured maybe something quick would be best!”

 

“Uh, sure,” Kurogane calls back, still slightly stunned, and goes to look at Netflix to see if there’s anything they could both conceivably enjoy. He doubts it.

 

Fai looks perfectly at home making dinner in his kitchen, like it’s something he’s been doing for years, even though he’s only been to Kurogane’s apartment a few times and never even used the kitchen. He’s even got a stupid apron, and it’s so much like one of those dreams that Kurogane gets a very odd wrenching feeling in his chest and has to sit down for a minute.

 

“What do you want to watch?” he says eventually, managing to only sound a little choked up. His emotions are doing very strange things right now and he’d much prefer that they didn’t.

 

“Ooh, what about  _ Titanic _ ?” Fai calls back from the kitchen. Before Kurogane can say anything (like  _ hell no _ ) he continues with “Oh,  _ The Notebook _ !” He has  _ got  _ to be doing this on purpose, just to be irritating. “Or actually, what about a comedy? There’s this really cute one with Chris Pine called  _ Just My Luck _ —”

 

“Absolutely not!” Kurogane shouts, storming into the kitchen. “Of all the ridiculous ideas—” And then Fai turns away from the stove and just  _ smiles  _ at him and he forgets what he was going to say.

 

“That’s…. not fair. That is so not fair! I am  _ not _ watching any of those idiotic movies, I don’t care  _ how _ much you smile at me—” he begins weakly.

 

“I’ll let you pick the movie next time, Kuro-chan!” Fai says, still smiling, and kisses him on the cheek. “I know, let’s watch  _ The Proposal _ .”

 

“Okay,” Kurogane finds himself saying, with what he’s sure is an idiotic smile on his face, and then groans. He is so doomed.

 

“Don’t worry, Kuro-puppy, I won’t make you watch  _ The Notebook _ . I don’t like it that much, anyway, it’s too depressing!” Fai winks at him and goes back to stirring the spaghetti sauce as if nothing has happened.

 

“I am  _ so _ screwed,” he says under his breath, finally understanding how Syaoran feels whenever Sakura tries to get  _ him _ to do something.

 

Kurogane snarks through the whole movie, of course, but secretly he’s enjoying it. He’s determined not to crack and give Fai the satisfaction, though.

 

“That is a lot what it’s like,” Fai says when the main characters get to Alaska, and Kurogane looks at him in surprise. “I grew up there,” he explains. “Or, well, for a while, anyway.” Kurogane takes this to mean that Alaska was where that Mr. King had lived.

 

When Ryan Reynolds reveals that his family owns practically the whole town, Fai smiles a little ruefully. “Yeah, that too,” he says, almost under his breath.

 

So, a McMansion in Alaska? That would explain…. a lot. And is possibly why he’s chosen this movie, which Kurogane is now sure he was planning to choose all along. It’s brave of him, considering all the memories it must bring up, but he seems all right.

 

Nevertheless, Kurogane reaches out and puts an arm around him, which up until now he’s been resisting doing. Fai leans into his shoulder and smiles up at him, looking so happy that Kurogane’s heart leaps in his chest a little. They stay like that until after the credits roll, when Kurogane looks down to see that Fai has fallen asleep.

 

He leaves him on the couch, gently pulling a blanket over him, and goes to bed himself. It’s been a tiring few days.

 

When he wakes up, he almost thinks it was all a dream, but no, Fai is still asleep on the couch and it’s all real. It almost scares him a little to think about it, and he wonders if this is really the best idea for either of them, but then Fai wakes up and says “Good morning, Kuro-sama!” and pulls him into a kiss and he forgets everything else.


	5. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, this.... exists and is nearly 50k.... and i'm washing my hands of it now

Absolutely everyone seems to be at Thanksgiving dinner. The Kinomotos’ house, which was not all that big to begin with, is packed to overflowing, and people have spilled out onto the lawn, shivering a little in the late November chill. Fai, Kimihiro, Sakura and Mr. Kinomoto, as the designated chefs, have not emerged from the kitchen for actual  _ hours _ , and some people are starting to get slightly worried.

 

“What if the turkey blew up or something and they were all burned to death?” Syaoran says seriously, reaching for another chip. “How would we  _ know _ ?”

 

“Don’t eat so many of those, kid, or you’ll regret it when dinner is ready,” Kurogane tells him, smacking his hand away from the chip bag. Then he remembers that Syaoran’s actual mother is here and looks around for her, not sure if he should apologize for slightly parenting her son or…. whatever. He needn’t have worried, though—she’s busy talking to Tomoyo’s mother about something or other.

 

“Sorry! I guess I wasn’t thinking—I’m starving, I’ve been ‘saving room’ all day…” Syaoran groans. “I’ve never had a real Thanksgiving…. we don’t really do it in my family. My mom thinks it’s such a weird American thing and my dad forgets it even exists.”

 

“I haven’t had one in years,” Kurogane admits. “So we’re kinda in the same boat, kid. Also, your girlfriend did not burn to death in a mysterious turkey fire. Stop worrying.”

 

Syaoran laughs. “You aren’t even slightly worried about Fai?”

 

“Fai could probably live in a kitchen. He never lets me make food any more,” Kurogane says a bit ruefully. “I’m a perfectly competent cook, but he insists on making these ridiculous things! And  _ experimenting! _ ” He makes a face that hopefully illustrates the results of some of these “experiments.” “He won’t even let me help, except to make me taste things! Usually he just… shoves the spoon in my mouth when I’m yelling at him about something!”

 

Syaoran makes a real effort not to burst out laughing, but ultimately fails. “I’m sorry!” he gasps. “It’s just—the mental image is too much…”

 

Kurogane just raises an eyebrow. Apparently hunger is affecting Syaoran’s brain as much as his stomach.

 

Touya and Yukito come back into the living room, holding hands and laughing about something. A few people have struck up a football game outside, and they’ve come in to ask who else wants to play. They end up convincing everyone, even Syaoran’s mom, who turns out to be a fearsome opponent. All four of his sisters are here, too, and Kurogane has been introduced to them but promptly forgotten all of their names. He’ll ask Syaoran for a recap later.

 

Doumeki shows up halfway through the game and joins Kurogane’s side. He gives no explanation for why he isn’t with his own family, and Kimihiro, emerging from the kitchen to announce that dinner will be ready in half an hour, yells at him for—not accepting his invitation but actually accepting it? No one is very sure what he’s saying, and Doumeki is no help. He just “hm”s and then, when this causes a further incoherent tirade, kisses Kimihiro to shut him up. It works, although Kimihiro sputters a little and says this isn’t getting him out of anything. Then they both disappear into the kitchen. Syaoran and Kurogane stare after them a bit wistfully, but Doumeki is expelled from the kitchen within under a minute. Apparently Kimihiro has put his foot down.

 

Yuuko appears at the dinner table, and afterward no one is quite sure whether she’s been there the whole time or somehow managed to get in without anyone seeing her. No one is quite sure whether she’s been invited, either. Later Touya swears he saw her appear out of thin air, but as he’s had a considerable amount of wine by this time, no one really takes him seriously.

 

There is an incredible amount of food, more than the Kinomotos’ normal-sized kitchen would seem capable of producing, and it’s all amazing. Fai and Kimihiro, who is also prone to experimentation, have kept their adjustments to a minimum, thankfully, although a few dishes do have some kind of “secret ingredient.” Doumeki seems fully capable of eating all of it by himself. Long after everyone else is groaning and holding their stomachs, he calmly goes back for seconds and thirds.

 

“Where does he  _ put  _ it all?” Syaoran whispers, nudging Kurogane, who’s in between him and Fai. “Whenever he eats at our house it’s like this, too.”

 

The conversations are mostly tame, thankfully. There are no heated discussions of politics, the worst alcohol-fueled argument concerns the quality of the Christian Bale Batman movies, and people mostly steer clear of awkward questions, “people” excluding Yuuko, of course. Yuuko plays the role of That One Embarrassing Relative with zeal and everyone is very glad they’re not actually related to her. She gets very drunk and tells people’s fortunes badly, then starts revealing random pieces of information about people at the table that she probably shouldn’t know and certainly no one wants anyone else to know. Highlights include several embarrassing stories about Kimihiro, one involving cat ears, which Doumeki snorts at and Kimihiro threatens to kill both of them; the story of how she convinced Kurogane to buy that Batman costume, which  _ he _ threatens to kill her for; a lot of poking fun at Fai’s fashion sense, which he just laughs at good-naturedly; and no actual big secrets, for which Kurogane silently thanks whatever deity might be listening.

 

At one point Kimihiro leaves to bring in the pies and Yuuko launches into a spot-on impression of one of his mini-tantrums, which Kurogane really should not be laughing at but it’s just  _ too good _ , and then of course the room goes abruptly silent when he comes back in.

 

“Uh, so, how long have you two been dating?” Tomoyo’s mother asks Kurogane and Fai cheerfully, trying to fill the silence. Kimihiro side-eyes everyone and glares at Yuuko as he goes back to his seat, knowing that  _ something’s  _ up.

 

This is not a question that Kurogane has been prepared for. It still feels weird acknowledging that this whatever-it-is they have going on counts as  _ dating  _ and other people notice it happening, despite the fact that Fai has proven himself to be one of those PDA types and  _ insists _ on holding hands or otherwise clinging to Kurogane wherever they go.

 

“Only a couple of weeks,” Fai answers for them, smiling and taking Kurogane’s hand in an exaggerated gesture.

 

“Can you ever  _ not _ do that?” Kurogane says out of the corner of his mouth through a rather grimace-like smile.

 

“You know you love it, Kuro-tan, don’t even try.” Fai doesn’t even bother concealing saying this, and there are stifled giggles along the table which quickly die out as Kurogane glares in every direction.

 

“Really! Because the way Tomoyo had been telling me about you two, it seemed like you had been dating since the summer,” Tomoyo’s mom says, looking over at Tomoyo questioningly. Tomoyo is suddenly very interested in her phone.

 

“You and me are gonna have a little chat later, Tomoyo,” Kurogane says, his tone exaggeratedly light, and Tomoyo is  _ incredibly _ interested in her phone.

 

“Well, I guess we kind of  _ were _ , in a way,” Fai says unexpectedly. “We were both kind of oblivious, though, weren’t we, Kuro-rin?” He leans over and kisses Kurogane on the cheek.

 

“Can you  _ not _ do that in public!” Kurogane says automatically, then starts to protest and say that Fai is completely off-base with the whole sort of dating thing. He opens his mouth and is about to argue when he realizes that it’s…. kind of really true…. and shuts it again. After all, they’d spent a lot of time together, doing things that could be considered date activities if you squint (especially the museums and concerts and such), seen each other every day, gone on a vacation together and shared a bed…

 

“Oh my god, we were basically dating for months,” he says out loud, and his face must look very stricken because no one can hide their laughter this time. “The whole time I thought I was seeing things and I—oh my  _ god _ , I’m  _ so oblivious _ ! You were blatantly flirting with me and I just thought you were like that with everyone!”

 

Fai stops laughing long enough to say “I drew a  _ heart _ on your  _ coffee cup _ ” and then he’s off again. Kurogane’s face is probably the color of the cranberry sauce right now.

 

“So was it love at first sight?” asks Tomoyo’s mom with a giggle.

 

Kurogane is not a fan of the deluge of personal questions and considers yelling at her, but there are too many people here and he’s trapped by the confines of politeness. Fai, however, doesn’t seem to mind at all.

 

“Oh, definitely!” he says cheerfully. This is news to Kurogane, and he drops his fork with a clatter. “The minute he walked in.”

 

“Does hate at first sight count?” Kurogane mutters, to a chorus of giggles. Fai pouts exaggeratedly at him and he amends this with “Not for long, though.”

 

Thankfully, Touya jumps in at this point and rescues him by going off on a story of his own about how he and Yukito met. Kurogane mouths a thank you across the table.

 

Everyone else quickly forgets about the incident, instead aww-ing over Touya and Yukito’s fairytale romance or whatever, but Kurogane thinks about it the whole rest of the night.

 

Fai walks Kurogane back to his apartment a few blocks down, which probably means he’s going to stay over at Kurogane’s again. He’s basically moved himself in already and Kurogane has barely even noticed. 

 

They’re mostly silent on the way back, except for Fai’s off-key humming of Christmas songs, which eventually turns into an “it’s too early, also shut up” argument that neither of them really means. When they get upstairs, Kurogane finally gets up his courage and asks, “Did you, uh… Did you really mean that? At dinner?”

 

“What, about love at first sight? Of course I did! Hang on, let me get these leftovers in the fridge.” Kurogane is left standing in the living room, not quite sure what he wants to say but knowing he should be saying something important.

 

“So you, uh. You love me?” They haven’t actually gotten around to using the L word yet, and it feels strange to say it.

 

“Well, yeah! I would have thought that would be obvious.” Fai comes back into the living room, flicking on the light. He’s smiling, the real kind of smile that lights up his whole face. It’s a good look on him, and it’s been happening more and more often.

 

“Yeah, I love you too,” Kurogane half-mumbles. Fai is still standing there across the room with an odd expression on his face, so he adds, “Get over here and kiss me, idiot.”

 

And he does.


End file.
